Got oil in your pension?

Posted by jamie — 16 September 2010 at 5:23pm - Comments

Watch this animation to find out how your pension money could be bankrolling destructive oil companies like BP - and what you can do about it.

Many of the world's most popular pension funds are deep in dirty oil. If you've got oil in yours, you're not alone, but it also means that collectively, we've got the power to influence our pension funds to shift the big oil companies to clean energy.

The big oil companies are drilling deeper than they have ever gone before to get oil out of the earth. But if they continue to squeeze out every last drop of oil, it will lead to a six degree increase in global temperature, which would be catastrophic for our climate. And that also means it's a risky investment for our pensions. If the oil company's behaviour isn't sustainable for the planet, it's not going to sustain our retirement.

But there is hope. Our pension funds are among the largest shareholders in BP and other oil companies and that means they can influence these energy giants to start planning now for our future. We need these dirty energy companies to stop investing in risky oil exploration and begin the transformation to clean energy companies that will power the future.

That way we'll be able to retire in a clean and healthy environment with pensions that value the quality of life we will have, not just quantity of profits.

Write to your pension fund manager and ask them to work for your future. If you don't have a pension fund, write to Legal & General, one of the UK's largest pension funds and a big investor in BP.

Articles in the local paper and Indymedia show how much local authorites are investing in oil companies like BP, often despite many of them having so called responsible investment guidelines which they are obviously not sticking to. Local authorities are responsible to the community - after all you/we voted them in so they should be challenged on how they invest their money http://www.thisisnottingham.co.uk/news/Council-pension-funds-environment... http://nottinghamshire.indymedia.org.uk/2010/05/450693.html

About Jamie

I'm a forests campaigner working mainly on Indonesia. My personal mumblings can be found @shrinkydinky.

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