WorldLeonardo DiCaprio, fossil fuels, global climate change, global warming, Wallace Global Fund, University of California
Sep 24, 2015 02:20 AM EDT
Leonardo DiCaprio along with 2,000 other individuals and 400 institutions plans to pull out their investments from fossil fuels in a move to fight global warming, activist group Wallace Global Fund announced Tuesday.
The Star reported that Wallace Global Fund campaign leader Ellen Dorsey said The Wolf of Wall Street star plans to divert his foundation's fossil fuel holdings.
According to The Guardian, DiCaprio, the 2,000 individuals, and the 400 institutions that plan to pull their money out of fossil fuel companies represents a total of $2.6 trillion worth of investments.
The foundations, pension funds, state governments, local governments, insurers, universities, and individuals who have pledged to reduce or eliminate their holdings in fossil fuel have investments in this industry that account for 3 to 8 percent of their portfolio.
Bloomberg writes that the University of California also joined the movement by pulling out $200 million in coal and oil sand company investment from their $98.2 billion in holdings. This is considered as the biggest divestment movement in the US.
Using information from the anti-apartheid movement on college campuses in the 1980s, students started pressuring various colleges back in 2011 to sell their holdings in fossil fuel industry and divest their money to renewable energy companies.
According to recent analysis, the value of investments being pulled off from coal, oil, and gas companies rose by 50 folds in the past year. Giant pension funds and insurance companies have even joined forces with churches and universities in the divestment movement.
Some of the biggest firms that joined the cause are the world's largest sovereign wealth fund in Norway and two of the world's biggest pension funds based in California.
UN's climate chief backed the movement on Tuesday. Now, there are 43 countries that are actively participating in the cause. The climate chief is set to lead negotiations for global climate change during the crunch summit in Paris this coming December.