Groups Call on Insurance Industry to Insure Our Future, Not Fossil Fuels
Protesting insurance industry’s role in fossil fuels, activists deliver over 345,000 petitions to stop insuring methane gas expansion in the Rio Grande Valley
HOUSTON – Activists from around the country joined with community members to call on insurance giants American International Group (AIG) and Chubb to reconsider their support for existing and expanded LNG projects across the Gulf South.
Delivering a petition with over 345,000 signatures to the Houston offices of Chubb and AIG, activists from Public Citizen, Rainforest Action Network, South Texas Environmental Justice Network, members of the Carrizo/Comecrudo Tribe of Texas and others gathered to rally against the companies’ in-action on climate change.
“AIG’s hypocrisy is astounding,” said Rick Morris, insurance campaigner with Public Citizen’s Climate Program. “AIG is abandoning homeowners on the U.S. Gulf Coast because of climate change, while insuring leaky polluting methane plants in those very same places. For years now AIG has ignored those communities’ requests to meet. In Houston, we are linking arms with community leaders to make our demands loud and clear: It’s time for AIG to insure our future – not fossil fuels!”
The action in Houston is one of over 50 protests mounted globally against the insurance industries’ lack of meaningful action to roll back its investments in and underwriting of fossil fuels.
The demonstration comes just days after a report exposed AIG as an insurance company supporting oil and gas projects across the U.S. Gulf South all while raising rates or pulling out of climate-vulnerable communities entirely.
“AIG, like other major U.S. insurers, presents itself as a victim of climate change when it’s actually complicit in the harm and undermining its own climate commitments by continuing to support methane facilities,” Kerrina Williams, climate campaigner with Public Citizen’s Climate Program. “The insurance industry must change the way they account for the risk their actions pose to communities and our climate and drop support of fossil fuels.”
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