I happened to be headed to City Hall for an unrelated meeting today when I came across the rally to encourage the City to unload it’s financial holdings in Walmart.
Well, here’s a disinvestment campaign that’s a little more in line with this site’s point of view. The ‘350’ movement (trying to limit CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere to 350 ppm) has a petition to encourage the State of Oregon and other local governments to disinvest in the 200 companies that control most of our fossil fuel resources.
I’ve signed, will you?
6 Comments
signed
I signed AND sent on to ten people, please join me and do the same !
Does this sort of divestment help in any way?
What share of these stocks is owned by organizations that would consider selling them as part of this program?
If there is any effect on stock prices as a result, what keeps other investors from just buying up shares at their discounted price? Unless the company was planning a stock issue to raise funds share price wouldn’t have any impact on their financials.
For new stock issues and bonds the situation could be different, but are there enough investors who would consider joining in this boycott to make a difference, to make financing new fossil fuel projects noticeably more expensive?
This seems like the sort of feel good petition that makes it easier to do nothing productive. Like setting a tax on carbon generally, or at least raising gas taxes, reducing tax incentives that encourage people to live in large homes far from where they work, maybe even funding research to grow meat in a lab at a fraction of the carbon cost of animal meat etc…
Signed.
This is an interesting idea, encouraging divestment from public portfolios. Hopefully cutting the tie with companies responsible for the CO2 will make it easier to enact policies that will negatively impact their profitability…
One caveat: managers of municipal portfolios are required to have a well-balanced portfolio, and excluding all energy stocks could be a problem. Second, major shareholders
can influence company policy, so holding onto the stock and cooperating with like-minded states could allow us to put pressure on a smaller energy company. As for Wal-Mart, well no reason to keep it. You can replace with Kroger.
All of this is stereotypical Portlandia smuggery. But then Chris Smith and his friends already knew that.