Divest Derbyshire

A new campaign is calling on Derbyshire County Council to immediately freeze any new investments in fossil fuels and to divest from direct ownership and any commingled funds that include fossil fuel public equities and corporate bonds within five years. The organisers of Divest Derbyshire believe this is important because the council’s pension fund currently has £290 million invested in fossil fuel industries include Royal Dutch Shell, BP and Rio Tinto, and fossil fuels need to stay in the ground if we’re going to prevent the catastrophic climate change. Fossil fuels are also becoming a riskier investment as they become more expensive to find and extract.

The petition is supported by the following Derbyshire organisations: Calow Against Gas Extraction (CAGE); Derby Climate Coalition; Glossopdale Transition Initiative; Melbourne Area Transition; Sustainable Edale; Sustainable Hayfield; Transition Belper; Transition Chesterfield; Transition Hope Valley; Transition Matlock; Transition New Mills. Transition Wirksworth; University of Derby Students’ Union.

As we wrote this news item the petition had 282 signatures and was aiming to get to 300 – could you be part of the push to reach 300? Sign the petition and/or have your organisation’s name added to the list of supporters: http://bit.ly/1jAtfHa