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The well being care sector is massive enterprise and has monumental financial energy and ethical authority. Collectively, U.S. hospitals have tons of of billions of {dollars} invested on the earth’s fairness markets by means of their pension funds, endowments, and different automobiles. Sadly, that features investments in fossil fuels.
A primary-of-its-kind report discovered 4 distinguished hospital methods—Kaiser Permanente, Mayo Clinic Well being Techniques, HCA Healthcare, and Ascension—have over $4 billion of their pension funds invested instantly in a number of the world’s largest, dirtiest fossil gasoline producers, comparable to Suncor, the most important “tar sands” firm in North America, and the disastrous “Willow” decades-long carbon-bomb mission in Alaska.
The report focuses on fossil gasoline investments in direct contradiction to the well being sector management’s requires decarbonizing the well being sector. This features a well-publicized “Name to Motion” by the president of the Nationwide Academy of Medication; widespread sustainability commitments made throughout hospital methods; and a voluminous physique of analysis confirming a spread of great threats to public well being from fossil gasoline air pollution and local weather change.
Fossil gasoline firms are each the chief drivers of our local weather downside and one of many chief obstacles to options. By investing billions of {dollars} in these firms, hospital methods will not be dwelling as much as their very own requirements or commitments. They’re working towards their acknowledged missions, their written sustainability insurance policies, and the moral basis of contemporary medication. In the event that they proceed to spend money on fossil gasoline firms, they’ll achieve this in contradiction to their acknowledged mission and values.
It’s time for the well being care sector to divest from fossil fuels. Local weather change is going on now, and delays have penalties that would make all of us sicker for many years to come back.
Signal the petition: The well being sector establishments should divest from fossil fuels.