On Friday the University of Mary Washington’s Board of Visitors formally requested the UMW Foundation Board revise its investment policy to further limit fossil fuel investments. This request comes weeks after the President’s Council on Sustainability report was released in early March. While this announcement might grab some headlines in the short term, the fine …
News of Yale University selling off holdings in three fossil fuel companies generated some media buzz this week, despite the small portion of these holdings compared to the school’s overall portfolio. To be clear, Yale did not announce it was divesting. So just what did it announce? Here are five things you need to know. …
The California Public Employees’ Retirement System (CalPERS) is pushing back against lawmakers’ latest calls to further divest the near $300 billion pension. On March 31, Representatives Ted Lieu (D-CA) and Mark DeSaulnier (D-CA) wrote a letter to CalPERS CEO Anne Stausboll calling for the fund to sell its ExxonMobil holdings. As the nation’s largest public …
On Wednesday the University of Toronto’s Presidential Advisory Committee released a 43-page, year-long report, laying out the various environmental and economic challenges posed by selling the School’s fossil fuel shares. The study, Beyond Divestment: Taking Decisive Action on Climate Change, highlights the “strong limitations” of divestment in addressing climate change. In addition to noting that …
Recently, Swarthmore’s President and its Chairman of the Board penned an op-ed in response to accusations made by the University’s pro-divestment student group. In February the Mountain Justice group, alleged that three of the University’s trustees were “severely compromising the integrity of any board decisions on divestment” due to their personal or professional investments in …
Divestment activists at prominent Canadian universities faced a string of defeats this week after the University of Toronto and McGill University administrations both officially rejected divestment proposals on the basis of economic and environmental pragmatism. These two top-tier universities are the latest in the country to follow reject divestment, following on the heels of the …
Proposals have been introduced in the New York State legislature to force New York’s public pension fund managers to divest all of New York’s fossil fuel assets by 2020 and all coal holdings within one year. Unfortunately for New York state retirees, these proposals ignore the financial reality of divesting. As New York State …
The Rockefeller Family is back in the news, claiming that the Rockefeller Family Fund will divest from fossil fuels as quickly as possible, and that it will “eliminate holdings” of Exxon Mobil and its coal and Canadian oil sands holdings. Yet while many in the press have caught on to the fact that these “divestitures” …
After long deliberation and careful analysis from legislators, economists and pension fund stakeholders, the Vermont Senate Government Operations Committee decided to not hold a vote to force the state retirement funds to divest from fossil energy holdings. Likewise, the House also backed away from enforcing state mandated divestment last month. Instead, at the urging of …
On Thursday, March 3rd officials from George Washington University (GW) informed Fossil Free GW that they will not be recommending divestment to the Board of Trustees. Anne McCorvey, GW’s Executive Vice President and Treasurer, noted that divestment is not part of GW’s investment strategy, and that the university believes that it is more productive to …
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