The Climate Crisis is everyone’s problem

The Daily Mirror should be congratulated for today devoting its entire edition and website to the climate crisis.

As the Mirror rightly points out, the climate crisis is everyone’s problem but we don’t have to despair – there is also action we can take.

The Mirror has some tips in today’s edition on how to offset your carbon footprint which includes sensible measures like cutting down on single-use plastic and buying less fast fashion.

These are often the measures that most easily spring to mind. So, it’s no surprise to us at Path Financial that thinking about how you invest your savings or pension does not feature on The Mirror’s list about how you can help the climate.

But I think it should. Here’s why.

Firstly, many people’s savings and investments are invested in FTSE 100 companies. But it’s widely recognised that a third of these stocks are damaging to the environment – for example, there are plenty of oil and mining companies in there. So, by not thinking about where your pension or savings money is being invested you might be contributing to the climate crisis without even realising it.

Secondly, choosing to invest your money in a way that helps the climate is something most people can do. You don’t need to be a millionaire. For example, most people have a pension or are saving for retirement. There’s the ability to choose where that money is invested. And that’s where we come in.

We want to help create a movement of people who think about where their money is invested and deliberately choose to put their money where it will do the climate most good. We want to help the planet while at the same time ensuring that people’s savings grow – it doesn’t have to be one thing or the other.

In my previous role working as part of a well-known national firm I got fed up with the lazy and complacent attitude of most financial advisers as to where their clients’ money was invested. There is often an assumption that there has to be a trade-off in performance if you want to invest in a way that has a positive impact. In fact, our evidence is that the reverse is true. Our goal is to lead the investing public on a much better path. One where their values are reflected in how their money behaves. I believe these values will be rewarded.

After all, it seems inevitable to me that financial returns will be found in the solutions to the climate crisis. Not in the dying industries that are causing the problems.

We say that every £20K invested with The Path is the equivalent of taking one car off the road.

We’re the first financial adviser set up with a clean sheet of paper to address the issue of climate change. It’s not something that is part of our business. It is our whole business model. So, I welcome The Mirror’s climate edition and hope that next time round they also talk about how to invest your money to help the climate crisis which we all need to care about.