Phoenix Arizona has had temperatures over 100°F for 106 straight days. The Alaskan snow crab fishery collapsed in 2022. It has gotten too hot for Koreans to farm the cabbage they ferment into kimchi. Snow crabs might never recover, but South Korea can import cabbage from other countries that have warmed up to the temperatures that Korea used to have. If we want to protect our grandchildren and keep the lifestyles we have had, we need to do some things a little differently.

One step is the divestment from fossil fuels that demonstrators have been calling for in the Summer of Heat on Wall Street demonstrations. The Summer of Heat includes more than 40 demonstrations from June 10 to Sept. 5 blocking the entrances to the New York headquarters of Citibank, AIG and Chubb to get them to stop financing and insuring the fossil fuel industry. The Summer of Heat included rocking chairs, dancing and cello music.

How to divest yourself

Citibank, AIG and Chubb need to divest. You do too, even if the ways you finance the fossil fuel industry is indirectly through go-betweens. There are three parts to divesting yourself:

– Retirement savings

– Banking & credit cards

– Insurance

Retirement Savings

About half of Americans have retirement savings in IRAs or 401(k)s. If you don’t have savings like those, you may have friends or family who do and who could use some pointers. Many organizations have savings in mutual funds: religious organizations, schools, local governments and other nonprofits. If you belong to an organization, ask whether they have divested. If you have retirement savings yourself, now’s the time to move them to a divested mutual fund.

To find divested mutual funds, visit Fossil Free Funds and adjust the search settings to find a fund that works for your values.  

Once you find a few good mutual funds, note their ticker abbreviations (like “NIAGX” or “PFGEX”), and learn more about what they finance by searching on their ticker abbreviation at Morningstar, clicking “sustainability” in the middle of the page, and “Values”. Morningstar will show you how much each fund finances industries like gambling, tobacco, and alcohol.

If you want to be extra careful, do a web search on the ticker abbreviation and “holdings.” Mutual funds provide snapshots of what they held on recent dates. If the fund is really divested, you won’t see gas stations, natural gas providers, coal mines, or oil wells in their holdings.

If you already have your retirement funds managed by a broker (like Fidelity or Schwab), you can sell and buy to move your investments to your chosen mutual fund. If your retirement savings are in a program managed by your employer, you might have to persuade them to divest. Because most Americans understand the importance of stopping fossil fuels, chances are that most of your co-workers also want the retirement plan divested. As You Sow has some guidance on how to convince your employer.

Banking & Credit Cards

I haven’t found a banking resource as comprehensive and helpful as FossilFreeFund.org is for mutual funds.  Here are several resources.  If you see the same bank recommended in multiple places, that’s a good sign.

Resources for finding divested banks:

• Mightydeposits.com
• Nerdwallet Socially Responsible Banks
• Bank.green
• Fossil Free California
• Bank for Good

Once you find a bank that looks good to you, do a web search on “fossil fuel” limited to the site of the bank you’re considering. A divested bank will report their divestment policy somewhere on their website. For example, to find out what’s going on at Beneficial State Bank, search on this: “fossil fuel” site:beneficialstatebank.com

Your search should bring up a commitment by the bank to avoid fossil fuel investments.

Most banks offer credit cards. If you get one through your divested bank, you know that you’re not financing fossil fuels through your credit card purchases.

Insurance

Insurance companies are like community savings banks. Every policy holder deposits some money every month, and the insurance company makes investments and earns interest. When the company pays out on a claim, it’s like someone making a withdrawal. In 2021, the U.S. insurance companies held $8 trillion in investments. The top 10 insurance companies alone invested over $50 billion in fossil fuels.

Many insurance companies face demands to be divested, but it looks like almost none have divested yet.  An exception is Lemonade, which works entirely by chatbot and AI. If you insured through Lemonade, you would never get to speak to a human customer representative. There is also Nonprofits Insurance Alliance, a divested company that specializes in insuring nonprofits. Other than that, I haven’t been able to find a divested insurance provider. Maybe someone can share one they found in the comments below.

The Insurance Commissioner of California provided a little guidance about insurance investments here.  To see the insurers with the lowest fossil fuel investments, click on “% of Fossil Fuel to Assets Under Management.” 

As far as I can tell, the responsible thing to do now about insurance is to keep an eye out for insurers who report they are divested. Divested insurers will appear in the next 10 years.

Why divest?

If you wonder why we need to stop fossil fuels or why we have to divest, ask about it in the comments.  I’ll fill you in there within the word limit on comments.

The short answer comes from Pope Francis: “Now is the time for new courage in the transition from fossil fuels.”

And from United Nations Secretary General Antonio Guterres: “The fossil fuel industry is killing us.”  “Leave oil, coal and gas in the ground where they belong.”

Have courage and stop financially supporting the industry that is killing us.