If you live in Hastings and work in the public sector – eg the local council, or the fire service – then your pension may be propping up fossil fuel companies.
In April 2016, thanks to campaigning by Divest East Sussex Group, Hastings became the first council in East Sussex to call on our County Council (ESCC) to stop investing in fossil fuels. Many others including Lewes, Brighton and Rother have followed suit. Nevertheless, ESCC is still investing tens of millions of pounds of local people’s pensions in fossil fuels, through the East Sussex Pension Fund.
In September the Fund published a long-awaited report on divestment. This was a significant missed opportunity. The report rehashed long-refuted arguments and ignored crucial evidence. it also revealed (perhaps inadvertently) that the divestment which campaigners, councils and unions have demanded for the last ten years would actually be fairly straightforward to implement, with no significant negative repercussions.
The next vote on divestment – proposed by my Green colleague Cllr Georgia Taylor and Liberal Democrat Cllr David Tutt – should take place in February. Over 1,590 institutions from across the globe, collectively worth $40.5 trillion, have committed to divest from fossil fuels.
It’s time ESCC joined them. The continuing threat from Big Oil is urgent. Just days before COP28 – this year’s UN climate conference, currently taking place in Dubai – it emerged that the United Arab Emirates planned to use its role as host to strike new oil and gas deals.
Meanwhile, Rishi Sunak has been backing fossil fuel expansion and weakening policies to cut the UK’s own carbon emissions, meaning higher energy bills, fewer jobs and lost investment. Simultaneously, a massive loophole in the UK’s current windfall tax is actually incentivising fossil fuel companies to pursue new oil and gas fields in the North Sea. Closing this loophole could generate almost £13bn of tax revenue between 2024 and 2026.
This money could help fund a National Energy Guarantee for the UK, throwing a protective ring around every household’s essential energy needs (providing half for free, and half at pre-crisis prices) and support for the most vulnerable. Such a guarantee, NEF notes, ‘could reduce bills by up to £700 a year for the poorest fifth of households’ while helping us to meet our net-zero targets. But it’s unlikely to happen while Big Oil calls the shots.
At present fossil fuel companies continue to block climate action, pollute our air, and rake in billions in profit – even as many people and businesses struggle to pay their energy bills. The global fossil fuel divestment movement tackles these problems at source: the political power of fossil fuel companies. By getting institutions worldwide to stop investing in these companies we can undermine their power, sending a powerful signal to policymakers that they are ‘bad enough to legislate against’.
As David Attenborough has noted: ‘It’s crazy that our banks and our pensions are investing in fossil fuel, when these are the very things that are jeopardising the future we are saving for.’