“SoCal 350 Climate Action joins forces with Divest LA and Mazaska (Money) Talks”

 

Fossil fuel divestment, Los Angeles, Wells Fargo

Divest LA supporters create a human art formation to spell out ‘DIVEST LA’ at Grand Park in front of LA City Hall.

Update from DivestLA: LA City Council Votes to Divest from Wells Fargo

In a huge win for Divest LA and indigenous, environmental and social justice allies, the City of Los Angeles voted unanimously on Wednesday, December 13, to approve a banking contract that would disqualify Wells Fargo from commercial banking services. Wells Fargo will be effectively blocked from bidding on the upcoming contract for not meeting the Community Reinvestment Act (CRA) requirements. The City will also adopt a new 30-point Social Responsibility scoring system for all banks, making it the most progressive Request for Proposal contract in the nation.

Link to Mazaska (Money) Talks Bank Boycott

SoCal 350 joined organizations and communities across the world putting together the largest ever protest of banks financing fossil fuels and their massive tar sands and fracking infrastructure projects. Now we need your help to amp up the bank boycott.

What is Divestment?

“Divestment is the opposite of an investment – it simply means getting rid of stocks, bonds, or investment funds that are unethical or morally ambiguous.

When you invest your money, you might buy stocks, bonds, or other investments that generate income for you. Universities (and colleges in the US), religious organizations, retirement funds, and other institutions put billions in these same kinds of investments to generate income to help them run. Fossil fuel investments are a risk for both investors and the planet, so we’re calling on institutions to divest from these companies.”

Learn more at Go Fossil Free from 350.org.

Recent History of the Movement

As of September, 2014, the total value of private and governmental entities that had pledged to divest their assets from fossil fuels was $50 billion. By November, 2015, three weeks before the Paris UN Climate negotiations, this number had grown over 50-fold, so that 350’s May Boeve could report in Paris that 436 institutions and 2,040 individuals across 43 countries and representing $2.6 trillion in assets had committed to divest from fossil fuel companies. A few big events helped achieve this staggering success. First, on June 5th, 2015, the Norwegian Parliament voted to order the country’s huge oil fund — at $890 billion, the world’s largest sovereign wealth fund — to pull billions of dollars of investments out of companies that derive 30 percent or more of their business from mining or burning coal. And in 2016 Governor Brown signed into law SB 185, mandating that California’s two giant pension funds, CalPERS and CalSTRS, divest from companies that get more than half their income from thermal coal. And all this divestment is helping capital to flow into renewable energy projects. Those institutions and individuals that have pledged to both divest and invest in clean energy collectively hold $785 billion in assets.

We Need You!

The rest of the team will comprise an event- planning committee to arrange events from a City Hall press conference to petition drives in local farmers’ markets. Finally, the group will enlist professionals in the investment consulting business to make comment before the boards and before elected leaders.

Both SoCal 350 Climate Action and Fossil Free LA want our divestment successes to match LA’s climate leadership reputation.  To secure divestment commitments from our local pension funds and the LA City’s investment portfolio would help achieve this goal.

Take Action

  1. Head to our Contact page or sign up on our list serve to stay up to date on our divestment efforts.
  2. Join us at our monthly general meetings, every third Sunday of the month, to get involved.