Thank US voters: Australian pension funds are backing away from climate pledges too
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Net Zero Dreams in ruins.
By Jo Nova
We’ve reached the flipping point downunder
The money is leaving the room. Australian pension funds manage assets of around $4.1 trillion, and until last week, many of them had Net Zero Targets. Certainly, there were none that tried to appeal to climate skeptics even though 70% of Australians didn’t want to even spend $1 a week on “Net Zero” plans.
This week, many of them are backing away slowly, speaking about a corporate and political backlash, like it’s a force of nature.
They won’t say the subsidies have dried up, they made the wrong bet, wasted billions of your dollars and hope they don’t get sued for a lack of fiduciary duty. They won’t say that pension funds are supposed to make money for their clients, not change rainfall patterns.
Last year, they were saying “Climate change poses a grave risk to the health, wellbeing and finances of all Australians, including retirees”. Three years ago the The Association of Superannuation Funds of Australia (ASFA) was campaigning for national net-zero policies saying “, the superannuation industry stands to lose billions of dollars in investment returns on behalf of their members,”. Pension funds were even supposed to hassle green businesses to “support them” on their journey of mitigation — like climate cops paid to hassle companies to follow laws laid out by global bankers, instead of elected governments.
Look how soft the headline is:
https://joannenova.com.au/2025/01/thank-us-voters-australian-pension-funds-are-backing-away-from-climate-pledges-too/