That’s up from $2.6 trillion and 400 commitments just ten short weeks ago… and includes new pledges from Europe’s largest insurance company, Allianz; from the London School of Economics; from cities like Melbourne, Oslo, Münster, Berlin and 20 French local authorities, to name but a few. 

I would call that serious momentum, and it’s the kind of news investors and institutions around the world need to hear. Can you help us share this incredible announcement?

This announcement is another sign in the early days of the Paris Climate Summit that investors are reading the writing on the wall and dramatically shifting capital away from fossil fuels and towards clean, renewable energy.

Thanks to campaigners like you around the world, respected institutions now acknowledge that if it’s wrong to wreck the climate, it’s wrong to profit from that wreckage. 

Today we’re closer than ever before to dismantling the power of the fossil fuel industry and its grip over our politicians.  The institutions that have made a commitment to #DivestforParis hope that their actions can push governments to follow suit by shifting public finance from fossil fuels to climate solutions.

Our team in Paris is working hard to make that hope into reality at the COP21, but it’s our movement’s task now to keep that message spreading to ever more institutions — our governments, churches, banks, pension funds, cities, cultural institutions and universities around the world.

You can follow all the latest from the folks here in Paris for the climate talks on our live blog.

Onwards towards greater victories,

May Boeve, http://www.350.org

From Jessica Leber, Co.Exist, November 23, 2015

Park your money in a fund that doesn’t do any damage to the environment with your investment.

For the last few years, students at universities all over the world have been getting involved in the fossil fuel divestment movement, asking their universities to sell holdings in oil, gas, and coal companies. But these students are also graduating, getting jobs, and possibly thinking about how to invest their own money.

Despite the growth of sustainable investing options, up until very recently, they might have had a hard time finding mainstream investment products in line with their values. Most market diversified funds—even those that advertise sustainability—still invest some amount in the fossil fuel sector. (For example, Vanguard’s FTSE Social Index Fund currently invests 2.3% of its portfolio in the oil and gas sector.)

That is starting to change with a handful of low-cost fossil-fuel free financial products geared towards everyday investors. Recently, for example, S&P Dow Jones launched a fossil fuel free index fund, the S&P Global 1200 Fossil Fuel Free Index.

And now a small firm, Etho Capital, has just launched what it says is the world’s first “diversified, socially responsible, and fossil-free” ETF on the New York Stock Exchange. An ETF is an exchange-traded fund, a fund with shares that track an index like the Dow Jones or, in this case, the Etho Climate Leadership Index (ECLI). They said they were targeting an initial share price of $25.

“We’re doing this at a price point that’s accessible to anywhere, whether you’re a student or a university endowment manager,” says Conor Platt, co-founder and CEO of Etho Capital.

The ECLI, which has 400 U.S. publicly listed companies across sectors, is interesting in the companies it does and does not include. First, the firm analyzed greenhouse gas emissions data from 5,000 public companies—not just from their operations, but from their products as well. It looks for companies with low emissions relative to their market capitalization and their industry. It then eliminates companies involved with the oil, coal, or gas industries (including fossil fuel services companies, like those that build pipelines), and also with the tobacco, weapons, and gambling industries. Last, it surveyed experts to screen out companies with poor environmental or social performance that the quantitative data left out.

Monsanto, for example, got the axe based on this subjective criteria. And the team decided to include copper mining companies with good climate-related records—which mine a material the world needs—but exclude gold mining companies, which for the most part do not.

The result is an ETF that is proactive for rewarding climate leaders in their industry and also draws a hard line to avoid the fossil fuel industry and a few other sectors. In autos, for example, companies that made the cut include Tesla and Harley Davidson, but the data showed that Volkswagen did not—despite its many sustainability awards (A good decision, as the company’s emissions scandal now confirms.) Other well-known companies included are Google, Intel, Norstrum, Disney, Chipotle, and First Solar.

“We think this climate efficiency data helps cut through a lot of the greenwashing,” says Etho co-founder Ian Monroe.

This may be the beginning, but there are going to be more fossil fuel free options coming. The Guardian rounds up two other fossil free options for your mom and pop investor—one is another ETF and another an actively managed mutual fund. And Etho Capital plans additional offerings. As a younger generation of investors who want their money aligned with their values starts to enter the market, large firms are going to continue to become interested in catering to them.

>>> Jessica Leber is a staff editor and writer for Fast Company’s Co.Exist. Previously, she was a business reporter for MIT’s Technology Review and an environmental reporter at ClimateWire.

Source: http://www.fastcoexist.com/3053513/want-to-divest-from-fossil-fuels-now-theres-an-etf-for-that