Opinion

Health professionals issue urgent call for climate action and for their pension plan to step up

In October, the World Health Organization highlighted findings from The 2024 Lancet Countdown on Health and Climate Change emphasizing the international health community’s call for “fossil fuel divestment to save lives.”

Nurses and other health professionals are no strangers to the ways our overheating planet is wreaking havoc on our health. That’s why the Registered Nurses’ Association of Ontario (RNAO) and partnering health professionals are calling on the $112 billion Healthcare of Ontario Pension Plan (HOOPP) to stop investing nurses’ retirement savings in companies that are making the climate crisis worse.

Nurses know that Canadians’ health is at risk – not in the distant future, not “soon,” but now. We don’t need to explain this to the residents of Jasper, Alta., who lost their homes in July due to wildfires fuelled by catastrophic drought conditions, nor to the grieving families of hundreds who died in B.C.’s devastating heat dome in 2021. We also hold in our hearts the millions in Central Europe, Spain, Nigeria, Brazil, Nepal and other countries that have experienced catastrophic flooding over the past year. And we are gravely concerned that we witness more youth than ever experiencing “eco-anxiety,” haunted by questions about the future that awaits them.

The devastation caused by the climate crisis will keep getting worse until we stop using coal, oil and gas for energy and allow the planet to start to heal.

As health professionals, whose primary mandate is to “do no harm,” we find it unconscionable that our hard-earned retirement savings are being invested in an industry that is the single largest contributor to the escalating climate crisis. Coal, oil and gas companies repeatedly lobby against and thwart effective climate policies while searching for more resources to extract and land to dig up. Supporting these actions conflicts with deeply held professional values and commitment to collective good.

Nor are these companies solid long-term financial bets for a pension fund entrusted with generating the strongest returns for its beneficiaries. Research has demonstrated that pension funds could have had higher returns by excluding fossil fuels from their portfolios a decade ago. And vast amounts of existing coal, oil and gas reserves can’t be burned if we’re going to have a safe climate, potentially leaving billions of dollars in stranded assets.

Nurses and other health professionals come face-to-face with the impacts of the climate crisis on a daily basis, be it heat stroke, asthma attacks or the devastating mental distress from losing a home. Continuing to invest our collective retirement savings in the fossil fuel industry is detrimental to both the planet and their pensions.

We cannot escape the climate crisis with halfway endeavours.

Health organizations are showing leadership with their own investments. In Australia, 500 health professionals have called on their pension fund to change course on its investments in a big fossil fuel polluter. Health-care workers in the Netherlands are relieved to know that their pension fund has completed its divestment from oil and gas. RNAO’s own investment strategy features an exclusionary filter for fossil fuel assets. And as HOOPP opens its doors to self-employed doctors, it should take note that the Canadian Medical Association has been excluding investments in fossil fuels for years.

Unfortunately, HOOPP seems to be hanging onto the outdated illusion that holding shares in these companies can influence them to stop wrecking the planet. But again and again, investors who have tried this approach have discovered it simply doesn’t work.

Nurses can at least be encouraged by the fact that our pension fund manager has started to acknowledge how much worse the climate crisis could become. HOOPP has created a climate strategy and made some commitments to invest in a way that’s less damaging to the planet. Encouragingly, HOOPP will invest $23 billion in solutions such as renewable energy by the end of this decade while committing to limit new investments in coal and oil.

But we cannot escape the climate crisis with halfway endeavours. We must act in full force; the disasters to date are only a glimpse of what is to come unless we take decisive action at the scale and urgency needed.

We urge HOOPP to fill in the gaps in its climate plan by fully committing to funding a just and sustainable future – not one marked by climate disruption. And we call on other health organizations in Ontario – especially those represented on HOOPP’s board of trustees – to join RNAO’s 54,400 members in presenting similar urgent requests to the largest pension fund in Ontario’s health sector.

HOOPP was a leader in divesting from tobacco with the rationale that “we don’t invest in companies that kill us.” We call on HOOPP to apply the same logic to fossil fuel investments, which are responsible for millions of deaths worldwide and the destruction of our children’s future.

We need the same level of leadership now, on an even larger scale. We trust that HOOPP will rise to the occasion.

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1 Comment
  • rickk says:

    My goodness – stay in your lane.
    Let the finance experts maximize my (and my colleague’s) return.

    Next you’ll be telling us the vaccines are safe and effective and that masks on 2yo and 92yo prevented the spread of covid…and we should be reinstituting mask mandates…

Authors

Doris Grinspun

Contributor

Dr. Doris Grinspun is Chief Executive Officer of the Registered Nurses’ Association of Ontario,

Laura McGrath

Contributor

Laura McGrath is senior manager, Shift: Action for Pension Wealth and Planet Health.

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