Opinion: Canada Pension Plan fuels climate-change crisis

November 20, 2019

Jessica Dempsey, a 2018 Wall Scholar, co-authored an opinion piece published in the Vancouver Sun about the effect Canadian Pension Plan Investment Board (CPPIB) has on the climate crisis. The article is based on a report recently published by the Canadian Center for Policy Alternatives, in which Dempsey and her colleagues analyze the financial risk as well as the moral and ecological failures. The CPP has invested billions in fossil-fuel companies whose financial worth depends on overshooting our collective carbon budget. As energy generation shifts away from fossil fuels, investors who don’t respond could be left with “stranded assets” — investments that are no longer profitable. 

While in residency at the Peter Wall Institute for advanced studies, Jessica Dempsey explored political-economic theorizations fo biodiversity loss, tracing how natural resources are kept in devalued, or “cheap” positions by laws, policies and economic systems.