Prince Charles said global warming is an increasing source of risk to the financial community, and investing in projects that will help the world stay within a 2˚C rise in temperatures over pre-industrial levels need not hurt investment returns.
“All investors must decide whether they are future-takers or future-makers,” he said.
Fundamental shift
Successive speakers at the meeting, held in the ornate surroundings of the City of London’s Guildhall, said that investors had to realise that a fundamental shift is taking place in the global economy – away from fossil fuel-led growth and towards a less carbon intensive, more sustainable future.
Investors were told they ignored this shift at their peril. By continuing to put money into fossil fuels, fund managers were placing their clients’ money at risk. Oil firms, even before the drop in oil prices, were delivering diminishing cash returns.
“We collectively sleep-walked into a global financial crisis,” said one investment fund manager. “We have no excuse for sleeping our way into a climate change crisis.”
Sarah Butler-Sloss, a co-founder of Europeans for Divest/Invest, a campaign that encourages individual investors, philanthropic organisations and pension funds to divest from fossil fuels, said that more than US$2.5 trillion of financial assets had so far been moved out of fossil fuels into renewables and other sectors.
The divestment campaign is expanding fast and enjoying a huge groundswell of grass roots support, Butler-Sloss said. “There will only be one eventual winner in this contest.”
Read more at Royal Call for Switch to Low Carbon Investment
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