Reuters - Nearly Half Of World's Top 500 Investors Doing Absolutely Nothing Re. Climate

[hatrack]

Almost half of the world's top 500 investors are doing nothing to address climate change through their investments, a study showed on Monday.

A report by the Asset Owners Disclosure Project (AODP), a not-for-profit organization aimed at improving the management of climate change, found that just under a fifth of the top investors - or 97 managing a total of $9.4 trillion in assets - were taking tangible steps to mitigate global warming. These include investing in low polluting assets or encouraging the companies they invest in to be greener.

A further 157 investors managing a total of $14.2 trillion were taking "first steps" towards addressing climate change, while 246 managing $14 trillion were doing nothing at all, the report said.

"Climate change risk is now a mainstream issue for institutional investors and last year has seen many significantly step up their action to manage this," AODP Chief Executive Julian Poulter said in a statement. "However ... it is shocking that nearly half the world's biggest investors are doing nothing at all to mitigate climate risk," he said, adding pensions funds and insurers that ignore climate change were "gambling with the savings and financial security of hundreds of millions of people".

EDIT

http://uk.reuters.com/article/us-climatechange-investors-idUKKCN0XS1NO

[Nihil]

1. I'm afraid I disagree with you quite strongly ...

> Nearly Half Of World's Top 500 Investors Doing Absolutely Nothing Re. Climate

They *are* doing something: they are gambling.

They are actively gambing that continuing with Business As Usual will return enough
profit in the short term as to allow them to cash out and hide out for the rest of their
parasitic lives in order to weather the worst of the storm in luxury before dying of
old age.

They know full well that climate change is real, happening and accelerating.

They know full well that the companies that they own & invest in are making the situation worse.

They don't care.

They have taken deliberate decisions to disregard the scientific evidence (not to mention
the moral arguments) in order to obtain a larger short-term profit.

That is not "doing absolutely nothing".

[hatrack]

2. Just like Dear Ol' Warren Buffet . . .

A post last week talked about how there's really no responsibility incumbent on an executive or office (his words, not mine) to take climate or environment into account unless it could affect profitability.

[Nihil]

3. It's getting near to time for a "Fallujah Barbeque" on a bridge near Wall Street ...

... "pour encourager les autres" ...