Washington, DC currently invests its retirement funds and our tax dollars in some of the most polluting fossil fuel companies on the planet, including Exxon, Chevron, Arch Coal and many others. By investing the city’s funds in these companies, DC is bankrolling climate change, poor air quality, sea-level rise, and climate migration. These impacts place the heaviest burdens on lower-income communities, children, and the elderly. If we think about it for a second, it doesn’t make sense for the city to invest in climate change on one hand while making plans to “green” the city through Sustainable DC and the city’s Climate Action Plan.
At the same time, recent research shows that if governments, companies and citizens take action on climate change, 80 percent of the fossil fuels that companies consider “assets” can never be burned, meaning those companies are very overvalued. This makes fossil fuel investments not only unethical, but financially risky in the long-term.
If it’s wrong to wreck the planet, then it’s wrong to profit from it.
In September 2013, Council Chairman Phil Mendelson (at-Large) introduced the Fossil Fuel Divestment Act of 2013 (Bill #B20-0481). The bill directs the DC Retirement Board and the DC Treasurer to take investments in the top 200 companies with the greatest fossil fuel reserves from the DC Retirement Funds (for teachers, fire fighters, and police) and the Health Annuity Trust.
About 0.1 percent of the DC Retirement Funds’ $6 billion in assets are directly invested in about 10 such companies. And, roughly speaking, $30 million of the Healthy Annuity Trust’s $1 billion (about three percent) is invested in these fossil fuel companies.
In late November 2013, the Council held a hearing on the bill. More than 30 citizens, non-profit leaders, financial professionals and scientists testified in favor of the bill, including Jim Dougherty of the Sierra Club, Washington DC Chapter; Brenda Ekwurzel, senior climate scientist at the Union of Concerned Scientists; and Reverend Lennox Yearwood, DC community leader and president of the Hip Hop Caucus.
To date, 10 Councilmembers have voiced support for the Fossil FuelDivestment act either publically or in meetings with the DC Divest campaign (www.dcdivest.org).
Next in the legislative process, the Committee of the Whole needs to mark up the bill and send it to the Council for two “readings,” or votes. If the Council passes the bill, the Mayor can sign or veto the bill. Finally, because of the District’s unusual not-a-state, not-autonomus status, the U.S. Congress has an opportunity to veto the bill as well (which has only happened three times in recent decades).
During the winter and spring, the Chairman’s office said that the Council was busy with election season, an unusually arduous budget development process, and that the Chairman was considering all the aspects of the bill.
We need your help! Call Council Chairman Mendelson’s office at 202-724-8032 and ask him to move the Fossil Fuel Divestment Act to mark up, and attend the DC Acts on Climate Rally on September 23rd at 9 AM. RSVP for the rally here: http://bit.ly/