Greens want NZ Super Fund to divest from fossil fuels

reports:

The are calling on the New Zealand Super Fund to divest from fossil fuels, as it accuses its guardians of betting on a climate disaster. 

The fund currently has $676 million in fossil fuel companies – about 2 per cent of the fund's assets under management.

The role of the Super Fund is to maximise the return on investment to help fund NZ . It is not to reflect Green Party ideology. If you want a Green fund, then you can invest in one of the dozens around. But one of the huge risks in the Government having a large investment fund is that politicians will want to use it for their own pet projects. First they start excluding stuff they don't like, and then they announce say $5 billion will be invested in wind farm companies, and bang the NZ Super Fund becomes a plaything for politicians.

“Getting out of fossil fuels is not only the right thing to do, it makes financial sense too.”

I wonder how many would die if in fact every fossil fuel company in the world had its funding turned off, and was unable to attract capital. I suspect it might be more than Mao managed!

I do agree that renewable energy needs to be a much larger share of the world's future energy supply. But fossil fuels in countries like China currently provide heating and electricity to hundreds of millions. If you declared a ban on any future fossil fuel extraction, then there would be massive shortages.

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