Our Environment and Fossil Fuel Divestment
Submitted by larryf13 on Tue, 05/05/2015 - 11:44am
Our environment is so precious to our future and lifestyle of the next generation. One of the greatest threats to humanity is the disruption of the climate. Most people feel powerless to do much about our thirst for more power to run our network of electronics and ignore our reliance on energy from carbon. The World Coal Association (WCA) estimates that 40% of our global electricity is generated by coal. We continue to grow frustrated by the ongoing failure of our country's leaders to take aggressive action to abate the inevitable climate disruption.
Fossil fuel divestment is not the end all or total solution to the problem, however, it shows promise for impressing our leaders on how urgent the climate crisis really is. Individuals who take our environment seriously are very concerned, rightfully so, and are saying that fossil fuels need to be phased out if our children are to have a healthy environment. Investors have a very powerful say in our future and have the ability to send a clear message. Our banks, churches, governments, universities and all other investors must dump their holdings in fossil fuel investments.
The fossil fuel divestment movement has exploded in popularity over the last several years, thanks in parts to the massive efforts of groups like 350.org, the group behind Fossil Free, (gofossilfree.org) Â the organizers of Global Divestment Day. In addition, the sweeping divestment movement is particularly attractive to tertiary education institutions around the world, and each month closes with more universities and colleges around the world announcing their divestment from fossil fuel investments.
Beyond the education world, a number of cities are making independent announcements of their own intention to divest from fossil fuels � the most recent being the city of Oslo, capital of Norway, which announced at the beginning of March that it would divest $7 million worth of coal investments from its pension fund. Oslo joins more than 40 cities around the world to have made similar divestment announcements, and two counties � San Francisco county in California, US, and Dane County in Wisconsin, US One of the more significant recent divestment commitments is that of the Rockefeller family, whose vast family fortune flowed from Standard Oil, is divesting its $860 million philanthropic organization from fossil fuels.
The global divestment movement is gaining momentum at a pace faster than any other divestment campaign. The alternatives to fossil fuel investing are numerous, encompassing stocks, indexes, ETFs and funds.
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GENI is a co-founder of the MSCI Global Climate 100 Index (GC100). The GC100 includes 100 equally weighted companies that operate in three key areas, clean technology, renewable energy and future fuels. We believe this index will provide above average long term returns while being socially responsible with the constituents it includes.
http://www.msci.com/resources/factsheets/index_fact_sheet/msci-global-climate-index.pdf
Disclosure Note: GENI receives remuneration from this (GC100) index.
Sustainibility Rankings and Data for various social investing areas not related to (GC100)
http://socialinvesting.about.com/od/Sustainability-Data-Rankings/
Larry Fontaine