Independent: Investors With $2.8 Trillion in Assets Unite Against Climate Change Denial

Taking steps to end reliance on fossil fuels and curb climate change is on the agenda at the meeting of foreign ministers of the world’s 20 largest economies in Bonn, Germany. “But as G20 foreign ministers meet on Thursday to prepare for a climate change summit in Hamburg in July, managers of funds with assets totalling more than $2.8 trillion - more than the entire annual GDP of the UK - called for leading economies to phase out fossil fuel subsidies within the next three years to avert a catastrophe,” reports Ben Chapman for the Independent. The group of global investors and insurers contend that subsidies for coal and oil are wasteful and bad economic policy as the costs of the changing climate continue to rise. The investors and insurers have investments in the fossil fuel industry, “but said a clear policy signal that clean energy will be backed would give them the confidence to shift their billions into renewables.” G20 foreign ministers and investors will be waiting to hear from new US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, former CEO of ExxonMobile, but they are also uncertain how much influence he has with the US president. – YaleGlobal