August 12, 2021

Are My Retirement Savings Invested in Fossil Fuels?? Help!

51 minutes

Look inside your retirement savings and you may find some surprises: oil and gas companies, pipeline operators, utilities with coal-fired power plants. It can feel like no matter what you’re doing to combat climate change in your daily life, your money is working against you. So how do you invest without wrecking the planet? Is there such a thing as green investing? And why isn’t this easier to figure out? This week we ask: What does it mean to try to put your money where your values are?

Guests: Andrea Egan, Leslie Samuelrich, Boris Khentov

Take Action!

First, if you do have a retirement account — find out what you’re invested in! You can go to FossilFreeFunds.org and plug in the names of the funds in your portfolio. They’ll give you a breakdown of the fossil fuel exposure you have right now.

Then: Demand better! If you want to go fossil fuel free and you have a retirement account at work that doesn’t offer good options, tell your HR department that you want climate-friendly or fossil fuel free funds added to your retirement plan. The shareholder advocacy group As You Sow put together a 401(k) Toolkit with advice for getting fossil fuel free options added to your retirement plan, and Green Century also created a handy guide.

You can do the same if you have an individual retirement account. Tell your asset manager you want high-quality fossil fuel free investing options. The more they hear from their customers, the more seriously they take these things!

And...keep calling Congress! The Senate is currently debating key climate policies, including a clean electricity standard, which we talked about in our episode, Is Biden’s Jobs Plan a ‘Skinny Green New Deal’? So now is a great time to call your members of Congress and demand serious action on climate change. You can use our tips or check out this handy guide from Fossil Free Media, at call4climate.com. They’ve got simple instructions and an easy script to help make your voice heard.

Want to learn more? David Roberts at Volts has a good run-down of what’s being considered in Congress right now.

Check out our Calls to Action archive for all of the actions we've recommended on the show. Send us your ideas or feedback with our Listener Mail Form. Sign up for our newsletter here. And follow us on Twitter and Instagram.

This episode of How to Save a Planet was produced by Rachel Waldholz. The rest of our reporting and producing team includes Kendra Pierre-Louis and Anna Ladd. Our supervising producer is Lauren Silverman. Our editor is Caitlin Kenney. Sound design and mixing by Peter Leonard with original music from Emma Munger and Peter Leonard.

Our fact checker this episode is Claudia Geib.

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