It was a sparkling late summer day when we were escorted into the board room. I was with a small group attending a board meeting of the Maine Public Employees Retirement System (MainePERS). The meeting was well underway when we entered. It proceeded in hushed tones; I had to lean forward in my seat to hear.

The muted atmosphere was in sharp contrast to both the light outside and my feelings about the topic at hand: divestment from fossil fuels.

Oil and gas companies continue to build new infrastructure at a furious pace. According to the International Energy Agency, they spent over a trillion dollars on new wells, pipelines, refineries and ports in 2023 alone. To pay off these investments, these facilities must operate for 30 years. CO2 emissions reached a record high of 37.4 billion tons in 2023. If the status quo continues, life as we know it could be over before this century ends.

We attended the meeting to listen to a MainePERS staff report on a “low carbon emissions target” fund. We heard that this fund has a slightly higher management fee than the plain-vanilla index funds MainePERS now holds. It would inconveniently veer away from MainePERS’ strategy to invest only in whole market index funds and not weight any one industry over another. “We don’t make bets,” the analyst declared.

But continued investment in fossil fuels is a bet. It’s betting that 66,000 peer-reviewed studies are wrong in reporting that carbon emissions are causing serious damage. It’s betting that fossil fuel companies will wake up one morning and decide that they no longer care about increasing profits and will do something else. It’s betting that someone — perhaps the government or taxpayers — can clean up the damage from burning fossil fuels. None of these seem like good bets to me.

Another striking feature of the meeting was that there was no mention of risk. I thought investors always talked about risk. They didn’t that day.

The risks I was thinking of as I sat in the meeting were not just risks to human health and life on the planet. I was thinking about the risk to fossil fuel companies caused by the growing number of lawsuits against them — now at 86 and counting.

We are headed for an explosion of lawsuits against fossil fuel companies. States, cities, counties and towns across the country and the world are suing them for creating years of doubt about climate science, and for the cost of climate damage to their communities. Fossil fuel companies have a target on their backs.

Nor did I hear anything about other divestment options and strategies that day. Divestment is now common practice, with many different approaches and investment products available. Over $40 trillion has been divested from the portfolios of over 1,600 institutions. Universities, foundations, retirement funds and individuals have all divested, while continuing to meet their portfolio performance goals.

But MainePERS looked at just one fund and called it a day.

The Maine Legislature passed L.D. 99 in 2021. This law requires that MainePERS divest from fossil fuels and gave it until 2026 to do it. No one expected it to pull the plug all at once. But with no plan in place, that may end up being its only option.

Divestment is a moral issue. It’s about doing what is right for humanity. You can think of it like a PR campaign. A $40 trillion PR campaign to pressure policymakers and oil and gas companies to clean up their act is a big deal.

As a member of the state retirement system, I’m sorry to see so little thought going into compliance with the law. There has been no discussion with MainePERS members nor any public discussion. Members of the public can sit and listen to board meetings, but they cannot speak.

The people running MainePERS are dedicated and smart. I know some of them personally, and I know they know the climate crisis is real. By pulling together a coherent plan to comply with the law, they can become thought leaders in their spheres of influence.

No one is asking them to divest from all their oil and gas stocks tomorrow. But I and others in the Divest Maine coalition are asking them to come up with a plan that satisfies both MainePERS members and the law.