It’s only been a few weeks, and already the Trump administration is undoing critical climate protections and other essential safeguards for our communities and economy. While we’re fighting back at the federal level, important progress can still be made at the state and local levels across the country.
Our financial systems are driving the climate crisis, but our public pensions and state treasuries can play a critical role in shaping a sustainable economy and safer future. Public pensions and state treasuries invest our tax dollars to fund public services and to provide a secure retirement for teachers, firefighters, and other government workers. Collectively, these institutions manage tens of trillions of dollars, which can be invested in climate solutions or in climate destruction. Unfortunately, public pensions and state treasuries are continuing to use our tax dollars to fuel the climate crisis by continuing to fund fossil fuels and other major polluters.
Climate change is not just an environmental crisis—it’s also an economic one. Continuing to invest in polluting companies not only puts our clean energy future at risk, it disrupts the ability of our friends, neighbors, and colleagues to retire by threatening the stability of their savings. Without urgent action, it will cause massive damage to our economy, our financial security, and our environment.
Redirecting money away from polluting industries and into climate solutions is one of the most powerful tools we have to accelerate the transition to a cleaner, more sustainable economy and to protect our savings so that workers can retire with dignity. Our public pensions and state treasuries must help lead the way.
- Take action: Tell public pensions to hold polluters accountable!
Public pensions and state treasuries play a pivotal role
State treasurers, pension trustees, and policymakers are in a unique position to drive this change. Getting them to invest our money in ways that support our climate and our communities is a crucial lever in bringing about a more sustainable future.
Across the country, the leaders overseeing these funds at the state and local level can do this by::
- Moving investments away from dirty fossil fuels and into clean energy, climate solutions, and green jobs;
- Harnessing investors’ power as shareholders to hold corporate polluters accountable across various sectors; and
- Engaging with the asset managers and other financial service providers to ensure they address climate and other sustainability risks to these investments.
Fighting climate change is not only the right thing to do, it’s also a financial necessity. And for the sake of our future—and our financial security—public pension trustees and state treasurers not only have a vested interest, but an obligation, to act.
Regardless of who’s in the White House, state treasurers and other public pension trustees must help support the transition to a clean energy economy and avoid climate disaster. With your involvement, we can embolden them to act.
What we need to do now
The Sierra Club is working to get public financial officers – our public pensions and state treasurers – to take the necessary steps to protect workers’ savings, our economy, and our communities from the worst impacts of climate change. We need them to stop providing funding to greedy corporate polluters, to invest in our communities and in decarbonizing our economy, and to use their power to hold corporations accountable for their destructive impacts.
Our state and local leaders must put our economy and long-term financial interests over corporate polluters’ short-term greed. With your voice, we can send a louder message urging public pension trustees and state treasurers to hold polluters accountable and make investments that support a more sustainable economy for all.
It’s time we make our money work for us: for our economy, our communities, and our planet.
- Take action: Tell public pensions to hold polluters accountable!