This case has also been made by Craig Mackenzie's Scottish Widows Investment Partnership, a division of Lloyds Banking Group, which has about $230 billion of assets under management. McKenzie has said that "many have a misinformed view that carbon assets will not be stranded until there is a global treaty establishing a uniform price on carbon." McKenzie's institution has, in fact, already sold all of its carbon stocks. [8] Another misinformed view, says Tom Steyer -- who founded a hedge fund and is now a billionaire -- is that people can wait to get out just before the bubble bursts. That, says Steyer, is "one of the stupidest things I've ever heard."[9]
The Combined Argument
Whereas some people focus on one of the two arguments or the other, some people combine them. Professors at Cornell University wrote:
Although some financial sacrifice in pursuit of our institutional responsibility would be justified, we have . . . determined that [divestment] will not only have a negligible impact on growth of the university's endowment, they may significantly reduce overall risk in the university's investment portfolio.
Likewise, Daniel Kammen, who teaches energy studies at the University of California, has said:
UC Berkeley and most institutions are financially invested in destroying our future. Instead of funding the problem, we should be investing in solutions that at once aid the transition to a low-carbon economy and grow our university's bottom line. There is no lack of financially and environmentally sustainable reinvestment opportunities. [10]
Finally, this twofold argument was made on the occasion of the biggest divestment decision to be made thus far by one of the major funds, the Rockefeller Brothers Fund: Just before the UN climate meeting in September 2014 at which the announcement was made, Seven Rockefeller, who is a philosophy professor as well as a trustee of the Fund, said: We see this as having both a moral and economic dimension."[11]
(This article is an excerpt from David Ray Griffin, "Unprecedented: Can Civilization Survive the CO2 Crisis? [Clarity Press, 2015])
[1] Bill McKibben, "The Case for Fossil-Fuel Divestment," Rolling Stone, 22 February 2013; Stephen Lacey, "Do the Math: Mr. McKibben Goes to Washington," Climate Progress, 19 November 2012; Justin Gillis, "To Stop Climate Change, Students Aim at College Portfolios," New York Times, 4 December 2012.
[2] Mike McGinn, "Let's Prevent This Crisis: A Letter to Harvard's President Faust," Office of the Mayor, City of Seattle, 17 October 2013.
(Note: You can view every article as one long page if you sign up as an Advocate Member, or higher).
2
1
1
