Liberty Mutual is one of the world’s largest insurers of coal, oil, and gas.
Why insurance?
Every new pipeline, coal mine, and fracking well needs insurance
With Liberty Mutual’s support, fossil fuel companies are digging new coal mines, building pipelines, and expanding oil and gas production in some of the most sensitive ecosystems in the world, often without the consent of impacted communities.
We don’t have time to wait.
The climate crisis isn’t some future threat. It is here now.
Unprecedented natural disasters are the new normal: Wildfires destroy entire communities. Massive hurricanes thrash coastal cities. Rapidly melting polar ice caps cause flooding around the globe.
These climate disasters will only grow more frequent and more devastating unless we take action, fast. The climate cannot afford any more coal, oil, and gas infrastructure, yet Liberty Mutual is insuring the global expansion of fossil fuels.
Liberty’s role
Liberty Mutual is insuring and investing in dangerous fossil fuel projects across the globe, including:
TAR SANDS PIPELINES
like Keystone XL and TransMountain
COAL MINES
Including a proposed new mine it wholly owns, the Baralaba South project in Queensland, Australia
FRACKED GAS
wells, pipelines, and export terminals
Liberty Mutual knows better: insurance is, after all, the business of risk management. As climate-related disasters threaten its bottom line, Liberty is already adjusting to a warming world by withdrawing coverage from wildfire-affected regions and flood zones.
The back of the pack
Insurance giants like Swiss Re, AXA, and Zurich have seen the writing on the wall and are starting to phase out coal and limit oil and gas business. By contrast, new analysis from Rainforest Action Network reveals that Liberty Mutual’s coal policy has massive loopholes that allow it to insure new coal mines and power plants, and the company has no restrictions on insuring oil and gas.
Globally, 19 insurers have made commitments on coal insurance, and nine have restricted oil and gas insurance to some extent. Liberty Mutual must match and exceed its leading peers and adopt policies that meet the scale and urgency of the climate crisis.
Liberty must stop supporting fossil fuel expansion that pollutes communities, violates Indigenous rights, and threatens our future.
“Liberty Mutual is insuring treaty violations and violence in my homelands. It is profiteering off of our lives and land, and it needs to stop. Keystone XL continues to threaten violence towards our women, increase crime, and potentially bring this deadly COVID-19 disease to our borders. How dare they insure such evil doings to our tribal nations."
Joye Braun
Member of the Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe and frontline organizer with Indigenous Environmental Network
"Liberty wants to build a coal mine that would destroy the land and water where I grew up and where my family has farmed for generations. The land and water raised me up, and we have a responsibility to protect it. The community is completely opposed to this mine, and we will never let it happen."
Paul Stephenson
Member of the Save the Dawson Group fighting the proposed Baralaba South open-cut coal mine in Central Queensland, Australia
"Liberty Mutual’s empty promises and half measures are simply unacceptable. By continuing to insure major fossil fuel projects and carbon polluters, Liberty Mutual is complicit in the environmental injustice and harm affecting frontline communities from Chelsea to Chinatown here in the Massachusetts 7th, and Indigenous communities across the globe."