Image: Mstyslav Chernov
The investments of Denmark’s capital city, Copenhagen, clash with its efforts to become a leader in sustainability, a recent article in Danish newspaper Politiken points out.
Copenhagen aims to become the world’s first CO2-neutral capital by 2025. If the city is serious about its goal, it’s high time for the European Green Capital 2014 to end its DKK 53 million investment in fossil fuels.
According to research organisation DanWatch, Copenhagen supports fossil fuel companies like Shell, Statoil, ExxonMobil, Gazprom, Glencore and RWE.
While the DKK 53 million invested in fossil fuels represent just 1% of the municipal budget of DKK 6 billion, continued investments in fossil fuels make Copenhagen complicit in wrecking our climate.
To stand a chance of staying below 2°C global warming, 80% of the fossil fuel industry’s known carbon reserves need to remain unburnt. Continuing to pump money into oil, coal and gas fuels runaway climate change.
It’s time for Copenhagen to follow the example of cities like San Francisco (USA), Dunedin (NZ) or even the small town of Boxtel in the Netherlands, and pull taxpayers’ money out of an industry that is destroying our climate.
Rather than funding climate wreckage, Copenhagen should show real leadership and invest in energy efficiency and community-owned, low-carbon solutions.
Meanwhile, a campaign is underway to get the Danish pension funds to divest from fossil fuels. Initial votes on divestment at the pension funds general assemblies were fairly close. The votes in favour of divestment ranged from 38% (JØP, lawyers and economists) to 46% (DIP, engineers) and 49% (MP Pension, academics).
You can add your voice calling on the Danish pension funds to divest here.
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