Nearly 100,000 people are asking the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to find a better way to spend its cash after the Guardian revealed it invests over $1.4 billion in fossil fuel companies.
The analysis of the world's largest charitable foundation looked at data from its most recent tax filing in 2013. The energy companies in which it most heavily invests include Exxon Mobil ($824 million), BP ($372 million), Vale ($32 million), Itochu ($22 million) and Anglo American ($20 million). The charity's endowment is over $43 billion and to date it has given out $33 billion in worldwide health grants.
The petition, organized by the Guardian and launched on Monday, had garnered 97,000 signatures as of Thursday afternoon. “Your organisation has made a huge contribution to human progress . . . yet your investments in fossil fuels are putting this progress at great risk. It is morally and financially misguided to invest in companies dedicated to finding and burning more oil, gas and coal," the petition states.
Christopher Williams, a spokesperson for the foundation, said in an emailed statement that foundation's assets are managed independently of the foundation itself by a separate entity, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation Trust. "The trust," he wrote, "does not comment on its holdings."
