Keep it in the Ground: petition to Gates Foundation, Wellcome Trust
Alex Brown
To Bill and Melinda Gates, founders of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation; Jeremy Farrar and Sir William Castell, director and chair of the Wellcome Trust:
Your organisations have made a huge contribution to human progress and equality by supporting scientific research and development projects. Yet your investments in fossil fuels are putting this progress at great risk, by undermining your long term ambitions.
Climate change poses a real threat to all of us, and it is morally and financially misguided to invest in companies dedicated to finding and burning more oil, gas and coal. Many philanthropic organisations are divesting their endowments from fossil fuels. We ask you to do the same: to commit now to divesting from the top 200 fossil fuel companies within five years and to immediately freeze any new investments in those companies.
Also:
- Coal played a part in ‘big five’ energy firms losing €100bn in share value
- Norway’s pension fund to divest $8bn from coal, a new analysis shows
- Fossil fuel divestment is rational, says former Shell chairman
- Paris climate pledges ‘will only delay dangerous warming by two years’
- Ban Ki-moon urges governments to invest in low carbon energy
- Australasia’s largest specialist college to divest £1.2m from fossil fuels