Protesting at the Exxon Station
The Rockefeller Family Fund announced it is divesting from fossil fuels and threw shame on Exxon Mobil in the process
From an Article by Daniel Marans, The Huffington Post, 03/24/2016
- The Rockefeller Family Fund will divest from fossil fuels, prioritizing Exxon Mobil holdings.
- The fund’s statement rips Exxon Mobil for allegedly deceiving the public about climate change.
- The decision by a nonprofit trust born of oil wealth carries symbolic weight.
- A recent ruling by the SEC also requires company shareholders to vote on a climate change resolution.
##– The FBI is considering whether to investigate the company for deliberately misleading the public about climate change.
The Rockefeller Family Fund is divesting from major segments of the fossil fuel industry, the fund said in an announcement that also singled out Exxon Mobil for blistering criticism.
The nonprofit trust, which was started by the heirs of the industrial-era oil monopolist John D. Rockefeller, called Exxon Mobil’s alleged efforts to cover up evidence of climate change “morally reprehensible conduct” in a Wednesday statement.
The fund, which provides grants to further environmentalism, women’s rights and corporate and government accountability, is the latest in a long list of institutions to divest from oil, gas or coal holdings.
With assets of $130 million, the trust is hardly the largest institution to make the leap. (The significantly larger Rockefeller Brothers Fund, another family philanthropic venture, made the divestment pledge in September 2014.)
The day before the announcement, the Securities and Exchange Commission dealt Exxon another setback. On Tuesday, the SEC ruled in favor of a group of shareholders who are pushing the company closer to disclosing its vulnerability to climate change and new government regulations.
But the fund’s stinging indictment of Exxon Mobil, part of a new escalation of investor-driven climate change advocacy, is especially notable because it comes from the heirs of the Standard Oil fortune, the mega-company from which Exxon Mobil first emerged.
“Evidence appears to suggest that the company worked since the 1980s to confuse the public about climate change’s march, while simultaneously spending millions to fortify its own infrastructure against climate change’s destructive consequences and track new exploration opportunities as the Arctic’s ice receded,” the fund’s statement says. “Appropriate authorities will determine if the company violated any laws, but as a matter of good governance, we cannot be associated with a company exhibiting such apparent contempt for the public interest.”
In the first stage of its divestment process, the fund will immediately eliminate all Exxon Mobil holdings, as well as all investments in coal and “tar sands-based companies” that the fund holds directly. directly managed by the fund, rather than outside asset managers. It will limit its “exposures for these three categories of investment” to less than 1 percent of its holdings. The second stage will involve divesting from other fossil fuels the fund holds directly, and all fossil fuels held in commingled funds.
“That is a longer process because these commingled funds are very difficult to get out of and we have to be very cognizant of our fiduciary duty to the institution,” said Lee Wasserman, director of the Rockefeller Family Fund.
Exxon Mobil’s potential involvement in denying climate science first came to light in the fall, when Inside Climate News and the Los Angeles Times published explosive reports suggesting the company had privately acknowledged the reality of climate change even as it cast doubt on the science in public.
After those reports, Reps. Ted Lieu and Mark DeSaulnier, Democratic congressmen from California, asked the Department of Justice to investigate whether the oil giant violated federal laws like the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act. (The federal government used RICO to press charges against tobacco companies 1999, claiming they had engaged in a conspiracy to suppress evidence of tobacco products’ health risks.) Earlier this month, the DOJ asked the FBI to look into whether Exxon Mobil acted illegally.
Exxon, for its part, brushed off the Rockefeller Family Fund’s divestment decision. “It’s not surprising that they’re divesting from the company since they’re already funding a conspiracy against us,” the company said in a statement.
The company pointed to the fund’s financial support for Inside Climate News and the Columbia University Journalism School, the latter of which collaborated with the Los Angeles Times on its series of stories about Exxon. Exxon called the influential reporting backed by the fund “inaccurate and deliberately misleading stories about ExxonMobil’s history of climate research.”
Wasserman said the grant to Inside Climate News was made without any knowledge that it would be used for the reporting project. The grant to Columbia Journalism School was directed at “public interest research into what the fossil fuel industry understood about the science of climate change and how they acted given that understanding both internally and regarding the public,” but it did not target Exxon Mobil specifically, Wasserman said.
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Pope Francis: Destroying the Environment Is a Sin
From Jax Jacobsen, EcoWatch.com, September 2, 2016
Destroying the environment is a sin, Pope Francis said in a message from Vatican City.
“Global warming continues,” the pontiff said in a message released Thursday. “2015 was the warmest year on record, and 2016 will likely be warmer still. This is leading to even more severe droughts, floods, fires, and extreme weather events.”
Pope Francis has sought to highlight the importance of environmental stewardship in his speeches. He would like “caring for the environment” to be added to the traditional Christian works of mercy, which also include visiting the sick and feeding the hungry. The pope last year declared 2016 to be the “Year of Mercy,” and urged Catholics to meditate on how they could reflect the love of God in the world.
He tied environmental concerns to the growing global migrant crisis. “Climate change is also contributing to the heart-rending refugee crisis,” he said. “The world’s poor, though least responsible for climate change, are the most vulnerable and already suffering its impact.”
Catholics should use this year to reflect upon sins they may have committed against the environment, and also urged forgiveness for the “selfish” capitalist system which advocates “profit at any price.”
“Economics and politics, society and culture cannot be dominated by thinking only of the short-term and immediate financial or electoral gains,” the pope said. “Instead, they urgently need to be redirected to the common good, which includes sustainability and care for creation.”
Pope Francis also targeted the indifference of many to environmental issues. “We must not be indifferent or resigned to the loss of biodiversity and destruction of ecosystems, often caused by our irresponsible and selfish behavior,” he said. “Because of us, thousands of species will no longer give glory to God by their very existence … We have no such right.”
Pope Francis also called Earth “our common home,” and said that rich nations have an “ecological debt” to poorer nations in the south.
“Repaying [this debt] would require treating the environments of poorer nations with care and providing the financial resources and technical assistance needed to help them deal with climate change and promote sustainable development,” he said in the speech.
Finally, he called on Catholics to consider what kind of world they want to leave for the generations that comes after.
Cardinal Peter Turkson, president of the Vatican’s council for peace and justice, also had commentary in the speech marking the church’s World Day of Prayer. “Pope Francis is asking us to be honest with ourselves and acknowledge that this is a sin—sin against creation, against the poor, against those who have not yet been born,” Cardinal Turkson said.
“The first step in this process is to humbly acknowledge the harm we are doing to the earth through pollution, the scandalous destruction of ecosystems and loss of biodiversity, and the specter of climate change—which seems nearer and more dangerous with each passing year.”
The pope is an “unlikely voice for the environment,” The Guardian pointed out in an editorial comment. The pope has previously insisted, most notably in his encyclical released in 2015, that overpopulation is not a driver of environmental destruction.
Environmental protection is not taken seriously by a small minority of Catholics, who argue that increasing industrialization provides more jobs and keeps more people out of poverty, Catholic Online reported.
One scientist had criticized the pontiff when he raised ecological concerns last year. Speaking after Pope Francis’ speech to the UN General Assembly in September 2015, renowned environmental scientist Paul Ehrlich criticized the Catholic Church for failing to preach the dangers of overpopulation and refusing to allow its congregants to practice family planning.
“The pope is dead wrong,” Ehrlich said. “There is no competent scientist who would say that there is not a problem with population growth.”
Pope Francis has made environmental consciousness one of his main focuses during his time in office. In 2015, he issued an encyclical—a teaching document—Laudato Si, which was the first ever to be issued that concerned the environment, Catholic.com reported. Also, encyclicals were traditionally addressed to bishops, and this one was the first to be addressed to every individual on the planet.
In it, the pope focused on pollution, climate change, water issues and the loss of biodiversity. He also linked these issues to global inequality.
In the encyclical, he called for human action: “Humanity is called to recognize the need for changes of lifestyle, production and consumption, in order to combat this warming or at least the human causes which produce or aggravate it.”
Contrary to public belief, Pope Francis is not the first pope with an environmental message. His predecessor, Pope Benedict XVI, also was concerned about climate change, and listed pollution as a “new sin” in 2008, U.S. News & World Report said.
Source: http://www.ecowatch.com/pope-francis-climate-change-1995225094.html
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