Protect our Planet – Protect Your Pension

The planet is in crisis and so is our pension.

In March 2019 (the most recently published data) Greater Manchester Pension Fund had £1.7 billion of its members’ pensions invested in fossil fuel extraction. Burning fossil fuels, as we all know, is causing greenhouse gas emissions and dangerously overheating the planet. We have already felt the effects in summer droughts, winter flooding, air and water pollution, stripping the land bare of wildlife habitat and causing mass extinctions.

These are inconvenient truths, which science recognises, but policy makers are slow to abandon ingrained habits. GMPF talks of achieving Net Zero (greenhouse gas emissions) by 2050. But we are running out of time. Within a decade we will have crossed a tipping point, from which there is no return – melting permafrost in Arctic regions is exposing methane gases to the atmosphere, far more potent even than CO2 in causing global heating.

Investment in low carbon industries, climate resilient infrastructure, upgrading homes and transport links, reskilling and retraining the workforce to enable a Green and Just Transition, is vital in order to avoid disaster.

Due to the Covid crisis, oil prices have plummeted. Shocks like this will become increasingly common in a more fragile world. Investment in these industries cannot be sustained.

We ask that GMPF divest from fossil fuels within the next two years, instead putting its members money into scaling up low carbon industries.

We humans are an extra-ordinary species. Let’s use our collective power to sustain life on Earth for ourselves, our children, and give us the chance to enjoy our pensions upon retirement.