Australia | New Report Calls to Divest from Climate Changing Fossil Fuel Investments

HCWH Strategic Partner in Australia, the Climate and Health Alliance (CAHA) and Doctors for the Environment, Australia released a joint report: Investing in Health. It urges Australia’s more than 600,000 health professionals, including doctors and nurses, as well as health organizations and health superannuation funds to quit their investments in coal, gas, and oil because of the serious harms fossil fuels pose to human health.

The report calls on health practitioners to withdraw investments from fossil fuels, a major contributors to air pollution and climate change. It highlights the strong relative performance of fossil-free investment portfolios and the financial risks to investment portfolios with coal, oil, and gas assets. However it emphasizes that it does not constitute financial product advice.

Written by Dr Nick Watts, the lead author of the landmark Health and Climate Commission published by The Lancet in 2015, with a foreword from Prof Nicholas Talley from the Royal Australasian College of Physicians, this report moves fossil fuel divestment into the mainstream as an ethical, healthy, economically responsible choice.

Air pollution in Australia causes respiratory and cardiac diseases and is responsible for more than 3,000 deaths each year – more than twice the annual road toll. Globally, there are seven million premature deaths each year from air pollution.