Public hearing scheduled in  response to citizens’ petition urging the City of Somerville to divest its pension funds from the world’s 200 largest fossil fuel  companies
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In response to a petition signed  by 129 registered Somerville voters, the City of Somerville’s Board of Aldermen  has announced a public hearing to discuss a resolution urging the city to divest its pension funds from fossil fuel companies. The hearing, scheduled for  Thursday March 13 at 6:00 p.m., marks the culmination of a yearlong effort led  by Fossil Free Somerville, the community group who organized the petition  effort. The proposed resolution urges the Somerville Retirement Board to  immediately cease any new investments in fossil fuel companies, and fully divest  from direct holdings and commingled funds within five years. While the decision  of whether or not to divest ultimately rests with the retirement board, approval  by the Board of Aldermen would communicate democratic, grassroots support for  the strategy.*
This local effort represents one  front in the wider Fossil Free campaign, which has supported divestment  campaigns at a variety of scales. The Somerville residents who signed the  petition hope the city will join a growing list of universities, foundations,  faith based organizations, and cities that have committed to fossil fuel  divestment. Inspired by the journalist and environmental activist Bill  McKibben’s “Do the Math” tour, the divestment movement seeks to challenge the  social license of fossil fuel companies, whose business model fundamentally  threatens the Earth’s climate by exacerbating climate change. Eric Fields, a  Winter Hill resident and Fossil Free Somerville member, argues that “to be  invested in fossil fuel companies is to support, profit from, and even take  ownership in continuing climate change. It deeply entangles our public  institutions with the industry that is destroying the planet.” To borrow a  phrase from McKibben, if it’s wrong to wreck the climate then it’s wrong to  profit from that wreckage.
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While arguments for divestment  rely in part on a moral impetus, one can also make a sound financial argument  supporting the strategy. An analysis crafted by the Aperio Group, a leading  investment management firm, estimated the additional risk to fossil free  investors to be a negligible 0.01%. Other recent reports, including one commissioned by the Greens/European Free Alliance (EFA) Group of the European  Parliament, warn of a “carbon bubble,” a market bubble caused by large sections  of stocks being valued based on profits that cannot be realized if we take climate change seriously. Far from a fringe movement, fossil fuel divestment is  supported by both the President of the World Bank, Dr. Jim Yong Kim, and  Christiana Figueres, chief of the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change.
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In the past decade, Somerville  has committed itself to making a long-term commitment to sustainability and  environmental stewardship. If the city hopes to live up to this ideal, citizens  and elected officials alike must reject continued complicity and commit  themselves to combating climate change in full measure. The unabated extraction  and burning of fossil fuels poses extreme risk to the global climate and world  economy. In his 2014 inaugural address, Mayor Joe Curtatone urged the audience  to “advocate together for the city’s retirement system to divest from fossil  fuels.” Join us this coming Thursday in the aldermanic chambers at Somerville  City Hall (93 Highland Ave), and make your voice heard.
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– Fossil Free Somerville
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About Fossil Free Somerville
Fossil Free Somerville is a  grassroots organization dedicated to locally oriented action designed to combat  climate change and challenge the companies that drive it. Specifically, we want  the City of Somerville to divest its pension fund from the fossil fuel industry.  Composed of a diverse range of Somerville citizens, we share a common conviction  that climate change represents the gravest exigent threat to the planet and its  people.