FossilFreeUMC

By Jaydee Hanson

The United Methodist Church cannot meet its net zero goals unless it diversifies from investments in fossil fuels. The net zero goals are targets that all of the agencies of the church and our bishops agreed to meet by 2050. This means that all of our activities as the church at a general level would have to have a net contribution of global-warming causing gases of ZERO by 2050. 

I do not believe that either the general church, nor our annual conferences can meet this goal without divesting from fossil fuels. Our pension board (Wespath) has already taken a step in the right direction by divesting from coal that is used in power plants (also called thermal coal), but they need to go further and divest from companies like Chevron, Exxon, ConocoPhillips, and Shell, all of which they have major investments in.

Individual United Methodists also should divest from fossil fuels. Our pension board offers a suite of funds called Social Choice Funds that are “Fossil Free,” even if their main funds still contain lots of fossil fuel companies. If you have investments in Wespath, you can in most cases move your personal funds to one or all three of the Social Choice Funds. I have invested all of my funds in the Social Choice Equity Fund, but other people should talk to their financial advisor as the bond funds may be more appropriate for your stage in life. 

A huge number of mutual funds now offer fossil free portfolios. You can learn about how fossil free your current retirement fund is by going to this website. This resource is a project of AsYouSow, a non-profit that exists to help investors and companies work for justice in their investing. 

This tool exists to make fossil-free investing easy.

Fossil fuel investments carry real financial risks. Over the past years, a growing divestment movement of institutional and individual investors representing trillions in assets under management have responded to this climate risk by divesting all or some of their fossil fuel investments.

Fossil Free Funds analyzes the fossil fuel exposure and carbon footprint of thousands of U.S. mutual funds and ETFs. We make it easy to know what you own, so you can align your investments with your values. You can run your current retirement fund by name through the fossilfreefunds.org website and see how it rates. If it is filled with fossil fuel companies, see if your organization allows you to change where you put your money. If it does not, work to get your organization to allow you to invest in fossil free funds, like Wespath does now for concerned employees of The United Methodist Church.

Sam Gooch, an employee of a Google-owned company, found out that his pension was invested in a lot of fossil fuels even though Google had pledged to reach net zero by 2030! He began organizing Google employees to demand climate friendly investment options. They filed a shareholder resolution with the help of AsYouSow at the Google annual meeting. Sam asked, “Will Alphabet (Google’s holding company and a Wespath investment) protect its employees’ life savings from the economic consequences of climate change by offering sustainable alternatives?” The shareholders responded by voting more than $81 billion of shareholder value for the resolution. 

You can ask your company to do what Alphabet did for its employees. If you are employed by The United Methodist Church you can ask your annual conference to switch to fossil free funding of your annual conference’s pensions. The Pacific Northwest Annual Conference did just that in 2016. The British Methodist Church has divested all of the church’s funds. The United Methodist Church should do likewise. 

A resolution to the last General Conference to divest was referred to the General Council on Finance and Administration (GFCA) when the time ran out for a final vote. Meanwhile, ask your annual conference to divest and join other annual conferences in becoming fossil free before the GCFA or the next General Conference acts.

Jaydee Hanson, from the Virginia Annual Conference, is a member of Fossil Free UMC and treasurer of Caretakers of God’s Creation.