Climate Change Protesters Return to Vanguard’s Headquarters, But This Time Coordinated With Simultaneous Protests Around the Country
Three year long campaign is growing geographically as more people turn their attention to Vanguard’s fossil fuel investments
Malvern, PA — Yesterday, the entrance to Vanguard’s headquarters became the site of a new art installation. As part of an international, years-long campaign targeting Vanguard as the world’s largest investor in fossil fuels, 70 local Quakers, high school and college students, and environmental justice advocates hung large clotheslines with Vanguard’s “dirty laundry”: the extreme floods, heat, and air pollution caused by fossil fuels and climate change. They heard from speakers and held a Quaker prayer service, or Meeting for Worship, as Vanguard employees drove past on their lunch break.
On the same day, groups in six other locations around the United States also held protests targeting Vanguard, asking it to invest sustainably. In addition to the protest at Vanguard in Malvern, there were events in Atlanta, GA; Charlotte, NC; Madison, WI; Richmond, VA; Scottsdale, AZ; and State College, PA. There was also a virtual Quaker Meeting for Worship attended by people from across the country, with the Malvern protest livestreamed in. This is the most protests targeting Vanguard that have occurred at the same time, and it comes three months after the largest climate change protest ever at Vanguard’s headquarters.

Photo by Rachael Warriner
These protests are part of the Vanguard S.O.S. campaign. Comprising of Vanguard customers, grassroots action groups, and sustainable finance experts, they are asking Vanguard to use its influence as a powerful shareholder to push the companies it invests in to do better on environmental issues, and to exit its investments in fossil fuel companies that refuse to transition their businesses to be in alignment with a livable future. For the past three years, campaigners have held dozens of protests, made hundreds of phone calls, sent thousands of letters, and moved tens of millions of dollars of investments out of the asset manager.
Vanguard is the world’s largest investor in fossil fuels, with about $444 billion dollars of its customers’ savings in coal, oil, and gas. Company leadership has refused to take meaningful climate action, lagging behind in the asset management industry by neglecting to engage seriously with portfolio companies on climate issues and by failing to release plans to decarbonize Vanguard’s investment portfolio in line with a 1.5 degree ceiling on global temperature increase. Campaigners hope that Vanguard’s new CEO, Salim Ramji, will lead the company to take climate risk seriously.
Climate change is on the minds of many Americans, as Florida wakes up today to the destruction wrought by Hurricane Milton and as the death toll from Hurricane Helene rises to more than 220 people in the Southeast and Appalachia. An analysis by the Department of Energy Lawrence Berkeley National Lab determined that climate change caused Hurricane Helene to produce 50% more rainfall than it would have otherwise in some parts of Georgia and the Carolinas. A separate analysis from non-profit Climate Central found that sea surface temperatures that fueled Hurricane Milton were 400-800 times more likely because of climate change.
Photos and videos from all the day’s events can be found here.
Contact: Eve Gutman, eve@eqat.org
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