Where can investors who worry about climate change put their pension?
"We're going after the fossil fuel industry," Bill McKibben tells about 1,800 cheering fans in a Washington, DC, theatre. "They're trying to wreck the future, so we're going after some of their money."
Al Gore notwithstanding, McKibben – an author, academic and founder of the grassroots climate group 350.org – is America's leading environmental activist. His 21-city Do The Math tour begins a campaign to persuade colleges, churches, foundations and governments to divest their holdings in coal, oil and natural gas companies.
"It does not make sense," McKibben tells the Washington audience, "to invest my retirement money in a company whose business plan means that there won't be an earth to retire on."
http://www.guardian.co.uk/sustainable-business/blog/fossil-fuels-pension-divestment
The article goes on to describe how many so-called "green" funds have large holdings in oil or other dirty-energy stocks. And though investing in a renewable energy sector fund will keep you out of oil, they're not very diversified - if renewables have a bad year, you could find yourself losing a good piece of your hard-earned savings.
I stumbled across what seems like the best of both worlds with the Green Century Balanced (GCBLX) and Green Century Equity (GCEQX) funds. Their specific focus: "The fossil fuel free Balanced Fund seeks to invest primarily in the stocks and bonds of companies that make positive environmental contributions toward a cleaner and healthier future and to screen out those with poor environmental records. The Fund provides an opportunity to not only invest in sustainable companies and environmental innovators, but also keep your investment dollars out of fossil fuel companies." And they're doing pretty well too.
A good resource for comparing "socially responsible" mutual funds, where you can invest your money tobacco-free, handgun-free, women's-equality-supporting, and supportive of a range of other issues:
http://charts.ussif.org/mfpc/
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Allowing your surplus accumulated capital to be used to grow the economy will lead to further energy consumption and carbon emissions, either directly or via a multiplier factor (from the "sustainable companies"
.
We don't need pseudo-morality in economic growth. We need all-around economic decline.
Does investing surplus capital lead to economic growth? Does economic growth correlate to increased emissions?
Hint: next time call me a poopy head. 
It certainly does. Is the amount CO2 that heads skyward just to make a solar panel that works 13% of the time justified? That's one reason I believe renewables are oversold.
Two things need to happen: we need to decouple carbon emissions from growth, and we need to promote "sideways growth", or a non-quantitative, non-consumptive definition of the word.
The only practical way to address out-of-control consumption is raising taxes. We need to create an artifical penalty on consumption, especially the conspicuous variety, because climate change that will really kick in 50 years from now isn't visceral enough. Of course, it has the added benefit of paying off debts we've incurred, which from a moral standpoint is a no-brainer.
If I understand you, you're saying that divestiture would result in lowering the price-to-earnings ratio of fossil-fuel stocks, making them a more attractive investment. That's true, but only if the stock shows potential for long-term growth. Al McKibben is fond of making analogies with the tobacco industry and they're extremely relevant. Here's an investor's analysis of tobacco stocks (substitute "fossil fuels" for "tobacco" :
Why are cigarette stocks and tobacco stocks considered attractive? Cigarette companies are getting dividend investors hooked on unsustainably high dividend yields. The headwinds for these stocks and their unstable dividend policies are bad omens. Alternative high dividend-paying stocks are suggested to help income investors kick the cigarette stock habit.
http://seekingalpha.com/article/940741-9-big-tobacco-stocks-that-could-kill-your-portfolio
People will have plenty of time to get used to it. There will be a dieoff over a century or two, then a little knot of rich people at the poles who kill each other.
Have a nice day. 
...right? 
The massive amounts of money for lobbying congress to make it easier for corporations to subvert the will of the people, to deregulate, to grease palms for more lax oversight, to launder money for drug cartels, to do business with enemies of freedom and democracy and not bear any retribution when caught.
Wall St and its corporations are above American laws. They are not friends of freedom or liberty, to the contrary, they do the best they can to enure more people are enslaved around the world to create products for our consumption and their own personal gain.
I am of the mind that Wall St cannot be touched. And that any efforts to regulate it to come in line with projections needed to avert the worst case scenarios of climate change would go into affect at about the same time Greenland collapses.
Supporting any of it, even with the best of intentions, is still supporting all of it.
I know we are all on the same page here and we all want to create a better future. I sure wouldn't call you any names. 
We are here, we care enough to discuss it and that is a start. It is a frightening issue. One that most people close themselves off from. For the sake of all future things, we have to start addressing it meaningfully, today. In any way we can. All things will eventually be on the table. The choice for us is if we want to start planning for it now or just keep the riding wave to its predetermined destination.
Climate change: Can wheat beat the heat?
If anything is fiction, its the notion that we can all profit while beating climate change with the magic free market. A hard rain's a gonna fall.
Now we are way off topic.
"The majority of their food is grown in clearings, which are created by using a method called slash-and-burn. The men of the tribe cut the trees down, and the women burn what's left. "
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kayap%C3%B3_Indians
"The Kayapo are a tribe with a long and strong warrior tradition and a deep-rooted battle ethic attributes which have stood them in good stead in the past as they resisted incursions on their lands and which they will likely need as they face their future.
Trekking with them years ago, I had a small taste of that tradition. While bathing in a river after a day's hike, an expedition member, a young man who had been particularly close to our warrior guides, inadvertently insulted one of the Kayapo by splashing water in his face. The expedition leader explained to the offending white that he could no longer be alone with our Kayapo friends. "If you are ever alone with them," the leader explained, "they will kill you." Kayapo warriors take personal insults quite seriously.
But Kayapo enjoy their own way of life today in large part because of what they are: tough. Their leaders traditionally rose to power in the tribe by leading long treks in search of game for tribal campfires and successful raids against their neighbors--be they fellow Kayapo, other tribes or white settlers."
http://www.gringoes.com/articles.asp?ID_Noticia=857
Our salvation lies in six billion of us slashing-and-burning our way to paradise in the jungles of Western Canada. But what do you do when a Kayapo shows up with a spear and wants your walnuts? 
