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Videos from Pension Fund members  Climate experts   Councillors and council candidates   Citizen groups     MPs   Trade unionists   Photo gallery

Videos from Pension Fund members

Ash Farrah

Sam O’Brien

Climate experts

Climate scientists at the University of Manchester’s Tyndall Centre have given their support to our call for GMPF to divest from its fossil fuel holdings.  They tell us that we need action to close down the supply of fossil fuels and make the point that engagement with the fossil fuel companies is a very weak strategy indeed for achieving that.

“Since I worked on the oil rigs in the 1980s, people have argued that engaging with fossil fuel companies is more effective than divesting. In that time the fossil fuel majors have extracted more than 200 thousand million tonnes of carbon and are planning to extract many times that again. This carbon will remain in the atmosphere for hundreds if not thousands of years. I hope it doesn’t take that long for engagement to convince these companies to leave it in the ground.”

Prof Kevin Anderson

“The carbon budgets we developed for Greater Manchester are intended to meet the Paris Agreement’s temperature objectives. To keep within this limit 80% of exploitable coal, oil and gas reserves have to remain under the ground. We need to tackle both the demand for fossil fuels and the supply and divesting is an effective way to do this.”

Dr John Broderick

 Councillors and council candidates

When asked by Manchester Friends of the Earth if they support the Fund divesting, an overwhelming, cross party, majority of council election candidates across Greater Manchester did:

Candidate responses to the divestment question, Manchester Foe survey, May 2019.

Candidate responses to the divestment question, Manchester FOE survey, May 2019.

On 10 July, 2019, Manchester City Council overwhelmingly passed a motion declaring a climate emergency.  It is included this clause:
“Through our role on GMPF, encourage divestment in fossil fuels as early as possible.”

Citizen groups

At our lobby and demonstration of the Pension Fund’s AGM on 19 July, 2019, twelve groups were represented: Fossil Free Greater Manchester, Tameside Trades Council, Tameside Green Party, Fridays for a Future, Frack Free GM, Stockport Anti-fracking, Manchester FOE, Fracking and health, Manchester Campaign against Climate Change, SERA (The Labour Environment Campaign), Steady State Manchester and Extinction Rebellion.  Individuals were members of at least three political parties (Labour, Green, Women’s Equality) and many are union members.  There were parents with young children, working age adults including those contributing via superannuation to the Pension Fund, and retired people including GMPF pensioners.  This demonstrates the increasing broad base of the fossil fuel divestment movement.

MPs

The following local MPs have signed our divestment pledge, lending their support to the campaigns calling on the Greater Manchester Pension Fund and the Parliamentary Pension Fund to divest from fossil fuels:

  • Debbie Abrahams MP (Oldham East & Saddleworth), former Shadow Secretary of State for Work & Pensions
  • Kate Green MP (Stretford & Urmston)
  • Andrew Gwynne MP (Denton & Reddish), Shadow Secretary of State for Communities & Local Government
  • Afzal Khan MP (Manchester Gorton)
  • Rebecca Long-Bailey MP (Salford & Eccles), Shadow Secretary of State for Business, Energy & Industrial Strategy
  • Lisa Nandy MP (Wigan), former Shadow Secretary of State for Energy & Climate Change
  • Angela Rayner MP (Ashton-under-Lyne), Shadow Secretary of State for Education
  • Jonathan Reynolds MP (Stalybridge & Hyde)
  • Jeff Smith MP (Manchester Withington)

Trade unionists

North West Unison’s Climate Action Group has an online petition (March, 2021) you can sign.

Photos

And ordinary citizens support us too.