CFA Published at NPQ: How Our Public Pension Dollars Can Advance Climate Justice
We’re thrilled to share that Climate Finance Action was recently published in Nonprofit Quarterly (NPQ)! The article explores the power of public pensions to drive real-world climate solutions and we’re honored to have our perspective featured in a platform that reaches so many change makers.
Check out an excerpt below and read the full article here.
Excerpt:
Public pension funds exist to provide a dignified retirement for millions of workers. But they also offer the public a powerful tool to influence corporate behavior. We are, after all, talking about $6.17 trillion as of December 2024.
Our eyes often glaze over when we are talking about trillions of dollars. To translate that into everyday terms, $6.17 trillion works out to over $18,000 per person in the United States or over $72,000 for a family of four.
What are public pension trustees doing with that public money? What should they be doing? And how can they balance their public goals with their fiduciary duty to support the retirement of state and local government workers?
In 2020, Climate Finance Action (CFA) began to seriously consider how best to work collaboratively with state public financial officers and local union leadership. Now, as executive director of CFA and a member of the first-ever stewardship and sustainability committee of the Massachusetts Pension Reserves Investment Management Board (MassPRIM), these are just a few questions I think about.
