A woman holds a banner reading 'Phase out fossil fuels now', as people speak up at the United Nations climate summit COP28 in December 2023, in Dubai, United Arab Emirates. Photo: Albin Hillert/LWF
World Council of Churches News | Nov. 18, 2025
BELÉM, Brazil — The World Council of Churches, whose members include The United Methodist Church, joined 61 other faith institutions Nov. 18 in announcing their divestment from fossil-fuel companies. The announcement came during the United Nations COP30 climate summit, November 10–21, in Brazil.
The widespread agreement of plans to divest was a signal to negotiators at the summit of an urgent need for fossil fuel phase out, “given the harmful climate, biodiversity, and human rights impacts of extracting, transporting, and burning fossil fuels,” the WCC reported in a press release.
“In this kairos moment we are facing today,” the Rev. Jerry Pillay, general secretary, reflected, “people of faith have to pay special attention not to be unconsciously or inadvertently complicit with the root causes fueling the climate emergency.
“Verifying with our financial service providers that church assets are not used to finance fossil fuel expansion is a moral imperative towards children and future generations,” he explained. “We therefore encourage all people of good will to use tools available and verify that their banks, pension funds, and insurances do no harm by supporting what is responsible for 90% of today’s CO2 emissions—fossil fuels. Let’s together accelerate the transition to renewable energies through responsible financial choices.”
Religious institutions manage a combined $3 trillion of investments globally, the WCC reports. As well as divesting from fossil fuels, faith communities are calling on governments and banks to phase out their support for fossil fuels and to scale up investment in clean energy.
A new report from Urgewald, a non-profit environmental and human rights organization based in Germany, asserts that the fossil fuel industry is planning 33% more short-term expansion than in 2021, the year in which the International Energy Agency stated that no new oil and gas fields are necessary to meet demand in a 1.5°C world.
Editor’s Note: The 2015 Paris Agreement on climate change set a goal of holding global temperature rise to 1.5 degrees C (2.7 degrees F). Since then, the “1.5C goal” has become the world’s North Star for climate action — a critical benchmark against which policies are set and progress is measured. But an alarming wave of recent data may underscore that nations are close to surpassing this widely cited threshold.
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