SF Bay PSR’s Divestment/Investment Task Force has been steadily pushing the California Public Employees’ Retirement System (CalPERS), which manages pensions for 1.6 million workers, to divest from fossil fuels. READ our most recent letter sent to the CalPERS board before their Nov 15–17 meeting, written by Dr. Robert M. Gould, past-President and current member of the National Board of Physicians for Social Responsibility (PSR), and president for San Francisco Bay PSR.
“Representing thousands of health professionals, we speak for the health of our patients and communities. As such, PSR calls for CALPERS to completely divest from coal and other fossil fuels, and instead invest its vast financial holdings in truly safe, renewable and sustainable, non-nuclear energy portfolios that could provide a prosperous future for its clients, while averting the most catastrophic public and environmental health consequences of global warming that threaten all human civilization.
The recently released assessment by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change is unequivocal in its call for urgent action to ensure an energy efficient and fossil free future. This call was recently reinforced by the unprecedented coordinated response of numerous prominent medical and health professional societies, with many journals such as the prestigious New England Journal of Medicine calling for emergency action on our climate crisis. This call to action flows from the widespread understanding within the broad health professional community about the rapidly unfolding impacts of global warming that gravely threaten our health.”
