Actor Tilda Swinton and chef Yotam Ottolenghi are among 100,000 people who have supported the campaign calling for the Wellcome Trust and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation to divest from fossil fuels

A Guardian petition which calls for the Wellcome Trust and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation to ditch their fossil fuel investments has gathered more than 100,000 signatures since it launched on Monday.

The campaign asks the world’s two largest charitable foundations to divest from the top 200 oil, gas and coal companies within five years and to immediately freeze any new investments. It was launched by Guardian editor-in-chief Alan Rusbridger in partnership with the global climate movement 350.org.

High profile signatories include Scottish actor Tilda Swinton and Professor Anne Glover, the former chief scientific adviser to the president of the European commission.

The campaign has also attracted the support of activist Bianca Jagger, Costa award-winning author Helen Macdonald and Rou Reynolds from the band Enter Shikari, while chef Yotam Ottolenghi said he backed it “because we’re running out of time and it’s pretty terrifying”.

Rusbridger said: “The argument for a campaign to divest from the world’s most polluting companies is becoming an overwhelming one, on both moral and pragmatic grounds. The usual rule of newspaper campaigns is that you don’t start one unless you know you’re going to win it. This one will almost certainly be won in time: the physics is unarguable.”



Bill McKibben, founder of 350.org, said: “We’re at a tipping point and it’s become clear that people and institutions of good conscience have to cut these ties. Now 100,000 people from around the world have combined to say that these giant philanthropies need to walk their talk.”

The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation have more than $1.4bn (£1bn) invested in fossil fuel companies, according to a Guardian analysis of their most recent tax filings in 2013. The charity has already given out $33bn in grants to global health programmes, including those dedicated to tackling the spread of malaria, polio and HIV.

The Wellcome Trust, which is one of the world’s largest funders of medical research, has an endowment of over £18bn. In 2014, a minimum of £450m was invested in fossil fuel companies including Shell, Rio Tinto, BHP Billiton and BP.

More than 200 institutions worldwide have now either divested from fossil fuels or have committed to do so, including faith organisations, local authorities and universities. In September 2014, a coalition of more than 50 philanthropic organisations and individuals in control of $50bn in assets committed to divestment.

The Wellcome Trust has refused to divest, arguing that its investments allow it to engage with fossil fuel companies, which offer “a better prospect for change than divestment”. The foundation was unable to provide the Guardian with examples of this engagement.

A spokeswoman for the Wellcome Trust said climate change and health was “a highly complex issue which we take seriously in our decisions and on which we engage with policy-makers, researchers and the businesses in which we invest.”



The Gates Foundation refused to comment on its position on fossil fuel divestment, arguing their investments are handled by the Asset Trust, which does not make public statements.

A spokesman for Bill Gates’s private office said: “We respect the passion of advocates for action on climate change, and recognise that there are many views on how best to address it. Bill is privately investing considerable time and resources in the effort [to develop clean energy].”

The most recent annual letter from the $43.5bn Gates Foundation asks “whether the progress we’re predicting will be stifled by climate change. The long-term threat is so serious that the world needs to move much more aggressively – right now – to develop energy sources that are cheaper, can deliver on demand, and emit zero carbon dioxide.”

Both the Wellcome Trust and the Gates Foundation sold off their respective £94m and $766m investments in the oil company ExxonMobil, which has funded climate change denial in the past. Both companies refuse to invest in tobacco on moral grounds.

Ed Davey, Minister for Energy and Climate Change backed the Guardian Keep it in the Ground campaign on Tuesday, urging pension and insurance funds to consider divestment from “very risky” coal assets.

Writing in the Guardian, he said: “I want this year’s UN climate change negotiations to be the seminal moment when humanity faces up to these challenges. That’s why I’m strongly backing the Guardian’s campaign to raise the profile of the divestment debate prior to climate change negotiations in Paris in December.”

The campaign has also received the backing of the Climate and Health Council, which encouraged the British Medical Association to commit to divestment last year, the first health organisation in the world to do so. Co-chair Dr Robin Stott described the Wellcome Trust’s decision to maintain their fossil fuel investments as “a dereliction of duty”.

The coalition was one of a number of medical groups that published a report in February, calling on health organisations to divest on moral grounds, as they previously did with tobacco investments. The report cited the UCL/Lancet commission on climate change which described climate change as “the biggest global health threat of the 21st century”.

Professor Hugh Montgomery, co-author of the report and director of the Institute for Human Health and Performance at the University College London said:

“I am backing the Guardian divestment campaign because I support the Gates Foundation and am a great fan of their work. I just want to help them to do more good.”

