Human-driven climate change is an existential threat to the health and well-being of humanity. It is a problem we are not close to solving. Even with recent policy wins by the climate movement, current policy in the U.S. and internationally has the world on track for catastrophe. A report released by the UN’s climate panel in March 2023 warns that the next few years represent humanity’s last opportunity to avert disaster.

The health care sector has responded to this threat in many laudable ways. Many hospitals and major health organizations are changing their own operations to reduce emissions. Some have even issued strong policy statements endorsing the international consensus that temperature increases should be limited to 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels.

If things get hotter than 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels, millions of lives are at risk. Our hospitals have made clear they understand the stakes. They also have enormous economic power and moral authority, and can and must do more.

Collectively, U.S. hospitals have hundreds of billions of dollars invested in the world’s equity markets through their pension funds, endowments, and other vehicles–and that includes investments in fossil fuels. Four prominent hospital systems–Kaiser Permanente, Mayo Clinic Health Systems, HCA Healthcare, and Ascension–alone have at least $4.6 billion of their pension funds invested directly in some of the world’s largest, dirtiest fossil fuel producers, such as Suncor–the largest "tar sands" company in North America and the disastrous “Willow” decades-long carbon-bomb project in Alaska.

Fossil fuel companies are both the chief drivers of our climate problem and one of the chief obstacles to solutions. By investing billions of dollars in these companies, hospital systems are not living up to their own standards. They are operating against their stated missions, their written sustainability policies, and the ethical foundation of modern medicine. If they continue to invest in fossil fuel companies, they will do so in contradiction to their stated mission and values.

It’s time for the health care sector to divest from fossil fuels. Climate change is happening now, and delays have consequences that could make all of us sicker for decades to come. They need to act now.

Sign the petition: The health sector institutions must divest from fossil fuels.