Greens want NZ Super Fund to divest from fossil fuels

Stuff reports:

The Greens 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 Superannuation. 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.