Tell TIAA to Divest from Fossil Fuels and Land Grabs!
As the climate emergency gets more dire, the financial sector is under increasing pressure to divest from the industries and sectors driving the climate crisis, like fossil fuels and industrial agriculture.
TIAA is a major investor in fossil fuels and fossil fuel infrastructure and the largest owner of farmland and timberland in the world for industrial crop and timber production. As the manager of the retirement funds for over 5 million workers, TIAA has an obligation to take urgent and immediate action to stop the climate crisis by shifting its investments to support the transition that we need to fair and sustainable economy.
However, TIAA has no plans to divest from fossil fuels, and in fact, TIAA's climate plan instead relies on grabbing more land for tree plantations to "offset" their carbon emissions.
TIAA has pledged to achieve "net zero" emissions by 2050, but this is too little, too late. The world needs to cut emissions in half by 2030. TIAA must act RIGHT NOW to move workers' retirement savings into industries that are cooling the planet, and not into risky "false solutions" that will only make the crisis worse.
Tell TIAA that "Net Zero" is NOT Zero! We need real climate action, not more land grabs.
Petition Text:
Retirement giant TIAA (Teacher Insurance Annuity Association) manages $1.3 trillion in assets and is one of the largest owners of farmland and timberland on the planet. Its clients are mostly universities and non-profits. It brands itself as a socially responsible company.
And yet, TIAA is still investing billions of dollars in oil, fracked gas, and coal. It also manages substantial investments in large-scale, high-emission agriculture and timber plantations to be burned for “bioenergy”. The company has been linked to land grabbers in Brazil, and its land acquisitions in the US have accelerated the corporate control over farmland, threatening family farms, and extracting land from Black farmers, communities of color and Indigenous Peoples.
TIAA says they will “offset” their emissions with unproven promises like “Nature-Based” carbon sequestration, which have no record of significantly reducing emissions, and often rely on systematic deforestation and industrial agriculture.
Over 100 organizations recently expressed their alarm about TIAA’s misleading climate plans in a letter to the new CEO.
TIAA must reach zero emissions, not “Net Zero.” This is a smokescreen that allows TIAA and others to go on polluting as much as ever.
Will you tell the company to live up to its claims to social responsibility?
We demand that TIAA:
- Enact an immediate moratorium on all new direct investments in fossil fuels;
- Divest from all current fossil-fuel investments by 2025;
- Divest from the Cricket Valley fracked gas power plant;
- Enact an immediate moratorium on all new investments in farmland, timberland, and industrial agriculture production;
- Work with a panel of independent scientific and human rights experts and community stakeholders to assess and report on TIAA’s climate and social impacts; and
- Commit to full transparency.
