The Climate and Health Council have backed the Guardian’s Keep it in the Ground campaign urging the world’s largest two charitable foundations to divest from fossil fuels.
The Climate and Health Council is an international coalition of health practitioners taking action on climate change. Members who sit on its executive board include Dr Fiona Godlee, the Editor of the BMJ, Dr David Pencheon OBE, Director of the NHS Sustainable Development Unit and Professor Hugh Montgomery, Director of the UCL Institute for Human Health and Performance.
Speaking on Thursday in support of the petition to the Wellcome Trust and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, co-chair Dr Robin Stott said:
We are overjoyed that the Guardian and its readers have started this campaign. We believe that all health organisations need to show leadership in divesting from fossil fuels – on both moral and financial grounds.
The Climate and Health Council is part of a coalition of medical organisations that published a report in February urging the health sector to divest from fossil fuels. The report argued that health organisations, and in particular the Wellcome Trust, should divest on moral grounds, as they did previously with regards to the tobacco industry.
Last year, the coalition encouraged the British Medical Association, the representative body of doctors in the UK to commit to divestment, which later became the first health organisation in the world to do so.
Dr Stott described the Wellcome Trust’s decision to maintain fossil fuel investments as “a dereliction of duty”. He said:
The health impacts of their grants will become irrelevant if the world is immersed in a world devastated by climate change. Tobacco is extremely profitable and they won’t invest in that on health grounds. We need to find a way of reducing carbon very quickly but we worry that there is undue influence on the direction of government policy. We saw exactly the same phenomenon with the tobacco industry and we think that the same merchants of doubt are creating similar problems here.
If you have an idea for our campaign or want your organisation to be involved, you can email us at keep.it@theguardian.com
Want the inside story on Keep it in the Ground? Don’t forget to download the latest podcast in “The Biggest Story in the World”, our audio documentary series on the project behind the scenes. If you haven’t yet signed the petition, you can join 94,000 people who have by signing here.
Are you a doctor, nurse, medical student or other health practitioner? Are you concerned about the health impacts of climate change? What should the sector be doing on the issue? Share your thoughts in the comments below and we will bring a selection above the line.
