The tide is turning against fossil fuels

Dear Friends,

Just now, New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio announced plans to divest the city’s pension funds from fossil fuels. As if that wasn’t a big enough moment on its own, he also announced a lawsuit against some of the world's biggest oil and gas corporations for the damage caused by climate change.

It’s huge news that a city as iconic as New York is picking a legal fight with some of the largest fossil fuel companies in the world.

At a moment like this, when the tide is so clearly turning against the fossil fuel industry, it’s absurd that the Canadian government is moving in the opposite direction by expanding the tar sands -- one of the dirtiest oil reserves in the world. As you’re reading this, Justin Trudeau and the Canadian government are reviewing the largest open pit tar sands mine ever proposed, Teck Frontier, without consideration for climate change or Indigenous rights. Thanks for signing the petition calling on the Trudeau government to give Teck Frontier a proper review. We want to deliver your signature along with thousands of others but before we do that, we need to double the number of signatures on this petition. Can you convince one other friend to sign this petition?

New York just added $200 billion -- including tens of millions invested in companies operating in the tar sands -- to the nearly $6 trillion in endowments and portfolios that have already been divested. When we dreamed up the idea of fossil fuel divestment in 2012 we were thinking: some colleges and some churches will do this. We didn’t dare dream that half a decade later one of the richest cities on earth would lead the charge.

We’ve seen a series of announcements recently that give us real hope for the future. Norway announced its state oil fund will divest from oil and gas. France announced it would ban any new oil and gas exploration anywhere on its territory. The World Bank announced it would cease funding new fossil free projects anywhere in the world. And of course, in 2017, the movement in Canada stopped Energy East -- the largest tar sands pipeline ever proposed.

Momentum is on our side. We are at the beginning of something truly awe-inspiring in 2018. And that’s thanks to all sorts of folks coming together to stand up to the big greedy bosses of the fossil fuel industry. Our future is a Fossil Free one. Let’s show Prime Minister Trudeau that we believe this to be true here in Canada. Help us add just one more name to the Teck Frontier petition.

Thanks,

Bill and Naomi.

PS - You can watch the full announcement from the NYC mayor here. 

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