Jane Fonda Highlights Stand.earth Research in Time Magazine Oped

Stand.earth research was featured in a new Time op-ed written by Oscar-winning actress, activist and writer Jane Fonda, who cited data from the environmental advocacy organization’s 2023 report “The Biggest Malpractice” to illustrate the connections between health and climate change.

Published today, Fonda’s Time article highlights the troubling fact that the top healthcare pension funds in the U.S. invested more than $4.5 billion dollars in fossil fuels.

“Climate-smart health care is preventative medicine on a grand scale,” Fonda said. “Think about it: We can’t have healthy people on a sick planet. Thank you, health care institutions for helping me heal. And join me, health care institutions, in helping the planet heal.”

Published in April 2023, the first-of-its-kind report found pension funds of four major hospital networks including the Mayo Clinic, Kaiser Permanente, Ascension Health System, and the nation’s largest health system HCA Healthcare have over $4.6 billion invested in fossil fuels.

The report focuses on fossil fuel investments in direct contradiction to the health sector leadership’s calls for decarbonizing the health sector, including a well-publicized “Call to Action” by the President of the National Academy of Medicine; to, widespread ‘sustainability’ commitments made across the sector’s 1,200 private hospital systems; and, to the voluminous body of research confirming a range of serious threats to public health from fossil fuel pollution and climate change.

“It’s absurd, and hypocritical to the ethos of healthcare, that large corporate-run institutions continue to make these harmful investment choices,” said Amy Gray, Senior Climate Finance Strategist with Stand.earth and coordinator of the Climate Safe Pensions Network. “Climate change represents a massive health crisis. Healthcare pensions can and must divest from fossil fuels to protect our health and our frontline communities disproportionately harmed by the fossil fuel industry.”

As part of the Climate Safe Pensions Network, the First, Do No Harm campaign launched in March 2022 through a publication in the New England Journal of Medicine. The campaign targets the healthcare sector, and calls on key high-profile private, large scale institutions such as the HCA Health, Mayo Clinic, Kaiser Permanente, Sloan Kettering, and NYU Langone to divest massive employee pension and retirement funds from fossil fuels.