IS YOUR SUPER WITH GESB?

DO YOU KNOW WHAT YOU ARE INVESTED IN?

Until 2013, GESB still had $52 million invested in the tobacco industry contributing world-wide to smoking-related illnesses. Today nearly $1 billion is invested in the fossil fuel industry.

We all know that smoking is a health problem; but the health effects of climate change, if left unchecked, are expected to be more widespread and catastrophic than what we have seen in relation to tobacco. Millions will be affected through malnutrition, malaria, diarrhoea and heat stress; rising sea levels will displace countless people from their homes; falling rainfall will lead to droughts and famine. In Australia alone, we will see more fires, storms and flooding and deaths from heat stress.

To avoid dangerous climate change, scientists tell us that we need to leave 80% of all fossil fuel reserves in the ground. Yet many energy and resource companies dismiss this fact and intend to extract and use these resources knowing full well this will take us far beyond the limits of a safe climate.

GESB’s investments in fossil fuels continue to support an industry whose business model is dependent on burning “unburnable” carbon. But major financial institutions are concerned about the economic risk of those investments in a “carbon-constrained” future. Combined with the mounting evidence that investments in socially responsible portfolios have returns comparable to more conventional funds, why would you be invested in the fossil fuel industry?

To invest in both a financially secure and healthy future for yourself and your kids, please sign the petition asking GESB to:

1. Provide greater disclosure of the companies that they are invested in so that members are aware of the industries they are supporting.

2. Offer a socially responsible investment option that explicitly excludes tobacco, gambling, weapons production and sales, old-growth logging and fossil fuel intensive industries.

3. Divest from thermal coal across its portfolios. Coal pollutants not only affect the climate but have direct health effects causing tens of thousands of premature deaths every year.

To have the most impact, please also email GESB as a member asking them for the above requests.

For more information about our campaign and fossil fuel divestment, please visit www.divestmentwa.wordpress.com