The major problem, Bill, is the usual GREED. Greed takes it all. The world will be poorer? Who cares? We'll still be wealthy. Wealthy beyond our needs, wealthy enough so our children won't have to work a day in their misbegotten lives.
Greta is a jewel and we need her and others like her. But the only way to resolve the issue is to tax the really wealthy to the point where they are just wealthy beyond their immediate needs - and very, very, few politicians are willing to do that.
We need younger Bernie Sanders' and Elizabeth Warren's
Bill, as a result of your message, I just canceled my Alaska Airlines Bank of America credit card. Not happy to do so, but I guess it’s the right thing to do.
Here in Maine, L.L.BEAN professes to be all about the "outside" as they are cuddled under the sheets with Citibank. Bill, you need to start mentioning them. They are a much easier target than Costco. Almost all of their customers love the environment while almost all of Costco's customers love cheap toilet paper. I hope that you will focus on how hypocritical LL Bean is. The best thing is that they can be contrasted to Patagonia, a truly ethical company.
more rain plus more carbon dioxide makes the planet greener. Nothing could be simpler. All those people just need to find a better place to live. Its not difficult.
"Wall Street in particular has come under fire for what some Republicans have called “woke capitalism,”"
The problem is less "finance capitalism", or capitalism as the sociology of social choosing through which humanity chooses where the money can, should and will be made to go to shape the enterprises that shape the technologies that shape the choices that shape the economy that shapes society and our shared future, and more "anti-woke" capitalism, or the special pleadings for the special interests of people with a vested interest in remaining in control of the choices that humanity chooses.
The call from CPO28 is the right call: "transitioning away...in a just, orderly and equitable manner"
Such transitioning away is being derisively labelled "woke" by those we need to be transitioning away from. As if being aware is somehow a bad thing to be.
What they do not want us to become aware of is the source of their power: the capture of Fiduciary Prudence by the Prudent Investor, where "investor" is encoded with the special meaning of meaning a person who buys shares at one price to sell them at another in the markets for maintaining market-clearing prices on those shares; making prudence not our own shared common sense of what makes good sense, but their expert knowledge of what to buy and when to sell in the markets for maintaining market clearing prices by financing Growth through Creative Destruction.
It's them a the Prudent Investor versus us as the Prudent Person.
That's the fight. And we have the law, and common sense, on our side. We just have to mobilize them.
Remember the Call to Orderliness from COP28, "for transitioning away from fossil fuels in a just, orderly and equitable manner".
Transition is not Growth.
Destruction is not orderly.
This is not a call that the Prudent Investor is constitutionally competent to answer.
A climate-conscious bank would announce a date certain to eliminate its global oil & gas teams (including banking, research, and commodities) and put related assets in a "bad bank" for wind-down... with any coal business shuttered immediately.
What about EMDEs and CCS? A climate-conscious bank would leave oil & gas clients in EMDEs to domestic banks - and CCS would be financed by serious (vs today's generally lame) Climatetech groups who operate under the same long payback principal as RE & EE - so new companies and technologies are supported now despite smallish near-term fee potential.
Oh yes, the chorus of cut-offs by institutional investors, PE firms, hedge funds, and countries would be deafening for the first to try. But maybe some disruptor will see the upside to going climate-conscious before ICEs and CFPPs get banned and high carbon prices, with CBMs, are ubiquitous. It will happen someday, I hope.
Bottom line - there is no way to moderate behavior if there are oil & gas (or utility/coal) banker's butts on seats.
Hi Bill: I'm intrigued by your report of the Rise Economy / Central Valley Community Bancorp merger commitment to "refrain from any new financing of fossil fuel extraction .." I'm researching them now to see if I can include their credit card offerings (issued by TIB) in my Fossil Fuel Free credit card listings (https://www.climateaction.center/fossil-fuel-free-credit-card).
--- that you personally have received information concerning an environmentally clean / "over-unity" / electric power supply;
--- that can stop all of the above pollution / profit taking and so-on.
Are you "just content to throw verbal rocks" at the problem?
Or are you an active member, like the rest of us that are actually working to correct the pollution problem that Governmental and Financial I institutions have funded;
--- like "B of A" - which can only stay in business if it makes a profit?
"Bank of America is a proximate cause of this kind of chaos, because it refuses to stop lending for fossil fuel expansion."
How about the "prosperous" consumer is a proximate cause of this kind of chaos, because of their unrelenting greenhouse gas emissions. On average, we are the problem, and are choosing to continue being the problem rather being the solution.
Consumers (individuals, organizations, businesses, governments) must promptly minimize their greenhouse gas emissions to bridge the gap while we work on long-term green technology and infrastructure. Less heating and less cooling (none between 13C-30C/55F-85F, https://greenbetween.home.blog). Less driving. Less flying. Less meat-eating. Less population growth (2 children max). Do it yourself. Tenaciously encourage others to do it.
Embrace the message and tenaciously introduce the message "business card" to all you encounter. (Print the business card 12 per 8.5x11 using a file from the Promote page of the website.)
Be a climate superhero - take it to the next level. Promote the message at local events. Files for posters available on the Promote page of the website.
There’s so much wrong here that it’s not obvious where to begin.
“The unbelievable economic fallout of those decisions—the fact that the world be immensely poorer, with its prospects hugely degraded, by the resulting rise in temperature...” is as good as any.
We believe you have it 180 degrees backward. The world will be about 350% richer by 2100, which would be about 354% but for the projected impacts of climate change.
That is, but for all your efforts to constrain dense energy in favor of intermittent energy, which will only cause far greater poverty for the bottom 4+ billion (who don’t share your beliefs or bank account) than would otherwise occur.
Particularly devastating to read about the banks’ reversal after reading a piece in the NYT about a study of sea sponges in the Caribbean that shows we might have already raised the temperature by 1.7 not 1.2 degrees as has been widely promoted. I appreciate all the good news sprinkled in but oh my heart.
2. With your voice, Bill, why not organize a few boycotts? What's the use in encouraging corporations to placate us? Why try to rationalize with them? They can't hear your language. They can hear our money leaving en masse, though.
3. I have become increasingly disappointed as I watch people who value environmental justice celebrate baby steps made by EPA, baby steps made by governments, baby steps made by corporations. The only baby steps to be celebrated are those made by babies. Big boys and girls need to grow up and take long strides in the right direction. By the way, when adults take baby steps, it's extremely easy to turn around and run back to the protection of the place where they started. (case in point: BofA)
Please give us a list of banks that are truly keeping their word on not supplying funds to expanding the oil and gas industry.
The major problem, Bill, is the usual GREED. Greed takes it all. The world will be poorer? Who cares? We'll still be wealthy. Wealthy beyond our needs, wealthy enough so our children won't have to work a day in their misbegotten lives.
Greta is a jewel and we need her and others like her. But the only way to resolve the issue is to tax the really wealthy to the point where they are just wealthy beyond their immediate needs - and very, very, few politicians are willing to do that.
We need younger Bernie Sanders' and Elizabeth Warren's
Bill, as a result of your message, I just canceled my Alaska Airlines Bank of America credit card. Not happy to do so, but I guess it’s the right thing to do.
Here in Maine, L.L.BEAN professes to be all about the "outside" as they are cuddled under the sheets with Citibank. Bill, you need to start mentioning them. They are a much easier target than Costco. Almost all of their customers love the environment while almost all of Costco's customers love cheap toilet paper. I hope that you will focus on how hypocritical LL Bean is. The best thing is that they can be contrasted to Patagonia, a truly ethical company.
I am so game for Third Act to take on Bank of America nationally. How about a strike?
more rain plus more carbon dioxide makes the planet greener. Nothing could be simpler. All those people just need to find a better place to live. Its not difficult.
"Wall Street in particular has come under fire for what some Republicans have called “woke capitalism,”"
The problem is less "finance capitalism", or capitalism as the sociology of social choosing through which humanity chooses where the money can, should and will be made to go to shape the enterprises that shape the technologies that shape the choices that shape the economy that shapes society and our shared future, and more "anti-woke" capitalism, or the special pleadings for the special interests of people with a vested interest in remaining in control of the choices that humanity chooses.
The call from CPO28 is the right call: "transitioning away...in a just, orderly and equitable manner"
Such transitioning away is being derisively labelled "woke" by those we need to be transitioning away from. As if being aware is somehow a bad thing to be.
What they do not want us to become aware of is the source of their power: the capture of Fiduciary Prudence by the Prudent Investor, where "investor" is encoded with the special meaning of meaning a person who buys shares at one price to sell them at another in the markets for maintaining market-clearing prices on those shares; making prudence not our own shared common sense of what makes good sense, but their expert knowledge of what to buy and when to sell in the markets for maintaining market clearing prices by financing Growth through Creative Destruction.
It's them a the Prudent Investor versus us as the Prudent Person.
That's the fight. And we have the law, and common sense, on our side. We just have to mobilize them.
Remember the Call to Orderliness from COP28, "for transitioning away from fossil fuels in a just, orderly and equitable manner".
Transition is not Growth.
Destruction is not orderly.
This is not a call that the Prudent Investor is constitutionally competent to answer.
But the Prudent Person can.
A climate-conscious bank would announce a date certain to eliminate its global oil & gas teams (including banking, research, and commodities) and put related assets in a "bad bank" for wind-down... with any coal business shuttered immediately.
What about EMDEs and CCS? A climate-conscious bank would leave oil & gas clients in EMDEs to domestic banks - and CCS would be financed by serious (vs today's generally lame) Climatetech groups who operate under the same long payback principal as RE & EE - so new companies and technologies are supported now despite smallish near-term fee potential.
Oh yes, the chorus of cut-offs by institutional investors, PE firms, hedge funds, and countries would be deafening for the first to try. But maybe some disruptor will see the upside to going climate-conscious before ICEs and CFPPs get banned and high carbon prices, with CBMs, are ubiquitous. It will happen someday, I hope.
Bottom line - there is no way to moderate behavior if there are oil & gas (or utility/coal) banker's butts on seats.
Hi Bill: I'm intrigued by your report of the Rise Economy / Central Valley Community Bancorp merger commitment to "refrain from any new financing of fossil fuel extraction .." I'm researching them now to see if I can include their credit card offerings (issued by TIB) in my Fossil Fuel Free credit card listings (https://www.climateaction.center/fossil-fuel-free-credit-card).
I followed the link to the story (https://rise-economy.org/rise-economy-central-valley-community-bank-announce-community-benefits-commitment/). Sounds like a great community benefits package, but I could not find the quote you referenced. Can you point me to it? Thanks!
Should we all just go to Canada and use their MAID program to permanently end our own carbon emissions?
Great piece of information as usual Bill.
But why didn't you include the fact:
--- that you personally have received information concerning an environmentally clean / "over-unity" / electric power supply;
--- that can stop all of the above pollution / profit taking and so-on.
Are you "just content to throw verbal rocks" at the problem?
Or are you an active member, like the rest of us that are actually working to correct the pollution problem that Governmental and Financial I institutions have funded;
--- like "B of A" - which can only stay in business if it makes a profit?
Kind of curious?
"Bank of America is a proximate cause of this kind of chaos, because it refuses to stop lending for fossil fuel expansion."
How about the "prosperous" consumer is a proximate cause of this kind of chaos, because of their unrelenting greenhouse gas emissions. On average, we are the problem, and are choosing to continue being the problem rather being the solution.
Consumers (individuals, organizations, businesses, governments) must promptly minimize their greenhouse gas emissions to bridge the gap while we work on long-term green technology and infrastructure. Less heating and less cooling (none between 13C-30C/55F-85F, https://greenbetween.home.blog). Less driving. Less flying. Less meat-eating. Less population growth (2 children max). Do it yourself. Tenaciously encourage others to do it.
Embrace the message and tenaciously introduce the message "business card" to all you encounter. (Print the business card 12 per 8.5x11 using a file from the Promote page of the website.)
Be a climate superhero - take it to the next level. Promote the message at local events. Files for posters available on the Promote page of the website.
There’s so much wrong here that it’s not obvious where to begin.
“The unbelievable economic fallout of those decisions—the fact that the world be immensely poorer, with its prospects hugely degraded, by the resulting rise in temperature...” is as good as any.
We believe you have it 180 degrees backward. The world will be about 350% richer by 2100, which would be about 354% but for the projected impacts of climate change.
That is, but for all your efforts to constrain dense energy in favor of intermittent energy, which will only cause far greater poverty for the bottom 4+ billion (who don’t share your beliefs or bank account) than would otherwise occur.
Just switched from BoA to a local credit union. Thanks for the reporting, Bill!
Particularly devastating to read about the banks’ reversal after reading a piece in the NYT about a study of sea sponges in the Caribbean that shows we might have already raised the temperature by 1.7 not 1.2 degrees as has been widely promoted. I appreciate all the good news sprinkled in but oh my heart.
1. Wherever you live and want to bank, you can find the data on your bank's or credit union's investments at https://mightydeposits.com/find-banks#/find?cause=all&page=1&feature=dep_dont_fund_ff,mobile_banking,mobile_check_deposits
Not all credit unions are clean.
2. With your voice, Bill, why not organize a few boycotts? What's the use in encouraging corporations to placate us? Why try to rationalize with them? They can't hear your language. They can hear our money leaving en masse, though.
3. I have become increasingly disappointed as I watch people who value environmental justice celebrate baby steps made by EPA, baby steps made by governments, baby steps made by corporations. The only baby steps to be celebrated are those made by babies. Big boys and girls need to grow up and take long strides in the right direction. By the way, when adults take baby steps, it's extremely easy to turn around and run back to the protection of the place where they started. (case in point: BofA)