“A US pension fund with nearly $2 billion in assets is considering selling its holdings in some of the world’s biggest oil and gas companies because of the threat posed by climate change.
In what investor advocacy groups say would be the first divestment of its kind, the Seattle City Employees’ Retirement System is to discuss on Thursday a request from Mike McGinn, the city’s mayor, to sell out of companies including ExxonMobil and Chevron.
The move is one of the most visible results so far of a campaign spearheaded by Bill McKibben, the US environmental activist, modelled on the 1980s disinvestment movement that pressed South Africa to dismantle its apartheid system of racial segregation.
Mr McKibben, founder of the 350.org climate campaign group, wants universities, governments and churches to divest from what he calls “outlaw companies”, whose coal, gas and oil cannot be safely burnt if the world is to avoid potentially dangerous global warming, according to climate scientists.
“These are no longer normal companies,” he said in an interview. “There is no flaw in their business plans. The flaw is their business plans.”
ExxonMobil said it was trying to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions while providing the world with the energy it needs. “We take the issue of climate change seriously and the risks warrant action,” a spokesman said.
If the Seattle retirement scheme were to divest from such companies completely, it would be the first to take such a step, said Stephanie Pfeifer of the Institutional Investors Group on Climate Change, which represents some of Europe’s largest pension funds and asset managers….”
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