Dire Warnings from Dr. James Hansen . . . again Those who receive Dr. James Hansen's occasional newsletter from his Climate Science, Awareness and Solutions team, will have seen some dire reports before. Still, nothing we have seen is quite as unimaginable or alarming as learning that global warming is happening at the equivalent of 750,000 exploding Hiroshima [...]
SEC Issues Trailblazing Climate Disclosure Proposal At long last, after studying the issue for many years, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission has finally released its long-awaited proposal to require companies to disclose their climate risks to investors. These proposed rules (neatly summarized in a 506 page notice) will require all publicly traded companies to disclose both their greenhouse [...]
Just Twenty Companies Responsible for Half of Power Sector’s Carbon Emissions in the US According to a press release posted by New York City Comptroller Scott M. Stringer, a coalition of some of the largest institutional investors, representing $1.8 trillion in assets, sent a joint letter setting a deadline for 20 of the nation's largest utilities to achieve net-zero carbon. [...]
Post of Barrons article quoting Dr. Tiemann Author Vito J. Racanelli published an article entitled "Corporate Scandals Have a Cost for Investors" in Barrons, in which he discussed the phenomena of Corporate America's multitude of "ethical and reputational fiascos . . . corporate half-truths, deception and sexual misconduct" incidents, many of which have been dominating the headlines. It turns out [...]
By Valerie Gardner BlackRock, an asset manager with over $5 trillion in assets, doesn't think so. According to Ben Moshinsky of Business Insider, BlackRock has issued a report warning investors that "Climate change is going to move a huge amount of money and not enough people are paying attention.1" For a group that holds major investments in various fossil fuel [...]
By Dr. Jonathan Tiemann, March 23, 2015 While we're on the subject of fiduciaries (see the post just before this one), there's another important principal (owner) - agent (person acting on owners' behalf) relationship in finance. That's the relationship between shareholders and corporate managers. The extent of managers' fiduciary duty to shareholders isn't really clear under the law, especially since [...]
Despite the well-pronouced and increasingly strident warnings from scientists about the deleterious effects of burning fossil fuels on the environment, there is a surprising amount of "business as usual" going on in corporate America. This makes the news about the way Anne Stausboll, the chief executive of Calpers, addresses climate change all the more impressive. According to an article in [...]
Lore has it, according to Thomas Friedman, that a Chinese emporor was so enthralled with the invention of the game of chess that he offered to fulfill any wish for the inventor. The simple wish: place 1 grain of rice on the first square of the chessboard, then place 2 grains of rice on the second square, 4 grains on the third square, 8 grains on the fourth and continuing doubling the grains across the entire board. The emporer granted the wish happily, only to discover that by the 64th square, he owed his kingdom in rice. Thomas Friedman included this among many brilliant observations and points made in a talk that he gave to Stanford's Precourt Institute last year. His point here being that trends that seem small and insignificat at the outset, can have huge and uncontrolled impacts if they maintain their incremental growth over time. He posits that we are on the second half of the chessboard in the way the markets work, the impacts we are having on Mother Nature and in the operation of Moore's Law on technology.
It is with a great sense of "what's taken so long?" relief that we read the New York Times' report on the shift by Exxon Mobil to agree to report on the risks to its fossil fuel assets as a result of climate change and the impending caps that are being placed upon carbon emissions. We are soon to be [...]