Good news came out of Seattle this week, as the Seattle City Employees’ Retirement System (SCERS) Board voted to reject a measure to divest the fund of energy holdings. Regarding the decision, the SCERS memo read:

While we are concerned with the profoundly negative impact that climate change is having on our environment, divesting … would negatively affect expected investment performance, even if pursued on a limited scale (e.g. only coal) or if pursued over many years.

Jason Malinowski, chief … Read More

It is a fact that good ideas get copied by others. The inverse, however, can also apply, and when it comes to the bad idea of divestment, those bad ideas come with real costs to pensioners.

With the city of Somerville, Massachusetts divesting their municipal pension fund of traditional energy assets, some divestment advocates are calling for this bad idea to be replicated elsewhere, such as in neighboring Cambridge. A recent letter to the editor written by a Cambridge resident … Read More

As a part of the response to the U.S. withdrawal from the Paris Accord, Pittsburgh Mayor Bill Peduto issued an executive order that called upon the municipal pension funds to be divested from fossil fuels by 2030. This week, experts announced just how much they estimated the city could stand to lose from such a move, and announced the amount to be $500,000 annually.

The researchers also noted that the losses that Pittsburgh would suffer would have only symbolic effect … Read More

Seattle has long been an outspoken advocate for various causes and the environment is no exception. After the U.S. withdrawal from the Paris Accord, many cities and states, along with Seattle, reaffirmed their commitment to the agreement.

Recently the Seattle City Council passed a resolution committing the city to uphold the Paris Accord. However, one of the recommendations in the resolution was the divestment from energy companies of the Seattle City Employees’ Retirement System (SCERS), the municipal pension system of … Read More

In the wake of President Trump’s decision to withdraw the United States from the Paris Accord, several local and state public officials have come forth with pledges to keep their states and cities in compliance with the treaty. While it is certainly their prerogative to do so, it is troubling that some of these announcements include talks of divestment, which does nothing to help the climate and whose only discernible effect is to hurt pensioners.

One of these leaders is … Read More