On May 8, a dozen members of Divest Maine protested outside the Maine Public Employee Retirement System (PERS) building in Augusta (the Maine employee pension plan). Divest Maine is a consortium of environmental groups that is asking Maine PERS to obey the law that Maine passed in 2021, to divest from fossil fuels.

There is no justifiable financial reason to stay invested in fossil fuels. This sector has underperformed the market for the last 15 years. Divesting is important because it will slow the expansion of new fossil fuel projects, so we’ll finally be able to make progress on climate change.

Exxon knew that fossil fuels were causing climate change as early as the 1960s. Exxon could have saved us all from escalating climate damage if it had started to invest in renewable energy. But instead, it paid for a propaganda campaign to tell everyone that climate change is a hoax. This was a lie, but the truth doesn’t matter. This industry is still paying politicians and media hundreds of millions of dollars a year to tell us that climate change is not a real problem. This campaign has created distrust and animosity towards renewable energy, and this has stopped Congress from taking protective action on climate change.

The fossil fuel industry made sure that climate chaos would happen. This was intentional. This is a rogue industry, and Maine PERS is cooperating with them, endangering our families. Tell the Maine PERS Board to divest.

Richard Thomas
Waterville