Climate Fix: Can Forcing Pension Funds to Divest from Fossil Fuels Help California Reduce Carbon Emissions?

KQED's Forum

KQED

News Commentary, News, Politics

4.2 • 727 Ratings

🗓️ 27 June 2023

⏱️ 56 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

A bill moving through the California Legislature would require CalSTERS and CalPERS, the nation’s largest pension funds, to pull billions of dollars they have invested in companies that produce fossil fuels. Some experts say divestment is an effective tool to force some of the largest-scale emitters to reduce emissions and move the economy away from fossil fuels. The movement is gaining momentum and plenty of opposition, including from CalSTERS, CalPERS and labor unions. For our next installment of Climate Fix, our monthly series examining global warming solutions, we’ll talk about how divestment works and what it could mean for California. Guests: Laura Klivans, reporter, KQED Anaya Sayal, campaign coordinator and lead circle member, Youth Vs Apocalypse, a youth-led climate justice group based in the Bay Area Marilyn Waite, managing director, Climate Finance Fund - a philanthropic platform that helps to mobilize capital for climate solutions. Marcie Frost, chief executive officer, CalPERS - the retirement system for more than 1.9 million California public sector workers and their families with roughly $160 billion in assets. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:46.0	Thank you. From KQED. From KQED in San Francisco, I'm Alexis Madrigal.
0:49.8	There's regular money, there's big money, and then there is California pension fund money.
0:56.1	Between the Calsters and CalPERS retirement funds, we're talking about more than half a trillion
1:01.1	dollars in investments.
1:03.7	But where should and shouldn't that money go?
1:06.8	There's a bill working its way through the California legislature that would forbid these
1:10.5	retirement funds from investing in fossil fuels.
1:14.4	Today, for our next installment of our collab with the KQED science team climate fix,
1:20.1	we're talking about the pros and cons of divestment as a tool to cut emissions here in the state and around the world.
1:26.5	That's coming up next after this news.
1:36.3	Welcome to Forum. I'm Alexis Madrigal and welcome to my colleague from the KQED science team,
	...

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