March to Retire Big Oil

About a fifth of the market value of US fossil fuel companies comes from 401(k)s and IRAs, according to As You Sow. Most savers never chose that: 99% of 401(k) plans offer no climate-friendly option.

Switching to a fossil-free 401(k) can cut more emissions than going vegan, flying less or driving an EV. Almost nobody knows it, and the fossil fuel industry lobbies hard to keep it that way.

Sphere, the nonprofit building climate-safe 401(k) options, needed a way to make a dry financial issue impossible to scroll past. It also needed a movement, not just a moment.

A march on Wall Street with no permit, no travel and no limit on who can show up. Upload a selfie and the app generates a photo of you marching down Wall Street with thousands of others.

Every image is stamped: This photo is fake, but the crisis is real. The watermark turns the obvious question, is this real, into the message. Nobody is fooled, and nobody is meant to be.

As Doug Burnett, Buena's founder, put it at launch, a virtual march lets anyone take part, whatever their location, money or physical ability. Signing up with an email came first, so every marcher joined a movement Sphere could keep talking to.

We built the app from August to November 2023. Launch moved to February 6, 2024, to test that it could handle the load and to line up with partners' campaigns.

A coalition of 55 organizations marched together, including Sphere, Stand.earth, Third Act, 350.org and As You Sow. More than 50 celebrities and climate voices committed to march, with a combined following of over 53 million.

Among them were Susan Sarandon, Don Cheadle, Patton Oswalt, Shepard Fairey, Adam McKay, Elaine Hendrix and Bill McKibben. The Crane Institute of Sustainability funded the march, which ran online from February 6 to 12.

The march gave Sphere's climate-safe 401(k) cause a coalition of 55 organizations and a bench of famous voices, all pointed at one website, RetireBigOil.org. Partners worked from one shared kit of posts and images, so the march looked the same wherever it appeared.

Many of the same names came back a year later for Retire Big Oil, the actors' campaign to divest the SAG-AFTRA pension. The march had already shown those voices would turn up for retirement money and climate together.

Every generated photo carried the site's address in the corner. Each share pointed back to the same ask: get Big Oil out of your retirement.