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Resolution in Support of Divestment from Fossil Fuel Companies WHEREAS on September 5, 2017 the Orange County Board of County Commissioners resolved that Orange County, the State of North Carolina, and the United States shall transition from a fossil fuel- based economy to a 100% clean renewable energy economy, by January 1, 2050 or sooner to avoid climate catastrophe, to promote job creation and economic growth, and to protect the Earth for current and future generations from climate catastrophe; and WHEREAS climate change and global average temperature increases are primarily due to human- caused fossil fuels emissions, including coal, oil and natural gas, according to the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, National Academy of Sciences, American Meteorological Society, United States Environmental Protection Agency, United States Department of Defense, and numerous other leading scientific, academic and governmental authorities both in the United States and internationally; and WHEREAS, “Measuring fossil fuel costs”, a 2015 study by University of Cambridge Judge Business School, reported on 20 fossil fuel companies and found that, while highly profitable, the externalized economic cost to society was also large. The report spans the period 2008–2012 and notes that: "for all companies and all years, the economic cost to society of their CO2 emissions was greater than their after-tax profit, with the single exception of ExxonMobil in 2008”; and WHEREAS after assessing the degree of externalized, climate-change costs by the fossil fuel industry and the proportion of those costs covered by the insurance industry, the president of the Reinsurance Association of America stated, “it is clear that global warming could bankrupt the industry”; and WHEREAS in order to mitigate the climate crisis the adoption of clean energy sources is causing global energy consumption to shift from fossil fuels to renewable energy. Global renewable electricity capacity is forecast to expand by 43% by 2022; and WHEREAS, in a 2016 report, the National Academy of Sciences concluded that it is now often possible to make and defend quantitative statements about the extent to which human-induced climate change has influenced either the magnitude or the probability of occurrence of specific types of weather events or weather event classes WHEREAS, Rhode Island on July 2, 2018 became the first state to sue oil companies over the effects of climate change, filing a complaint seeking damages for the costs associated with protecting the state from rising seas and severe weather. WHEREAS a 2013 study by HSBC, one of the largest banking and financial services institutions in the world, found that between 40% and 60% of the market value of BP, Royal Dutch Shell and other European fossil fuel companies could be wiped out because of stranded assets caused by carbon emission regulation; and