May, 23 2019, 12:00am EDT
For Immediate Release
Contact:
Myriam Fallon, 708.546.9001, myriam@sunriseproject.net Â
Gabby Brown, 914.261.4626, gabby.brown@sierraclub.org
BlackRock CEO Larry Fink Faces Protest at Annual Shareholder Meeting for Lack of Action on Climate Change
Leaders from around the world came to New York to demand expedited action but several were denied entry to meeting despite holding proxies from shareholders
WASHINGTON
Today, BlackRock CEO Larry Fink faced criticism from community leaders, researchers, and legal experts at the company's annual general meeting (AGM). During the meeting speakers from the Amazon and the U.S. called out Fink for the fact that his rhetoric on climate change does not match BlackRock's actions, while others from India, the Philippines, and the U.S. were denied entry into the meeting. BlackRock continues to be the largest global investor in coal, oil, and gas extraction, as well as companies building new coal plants, and is one of the largest investors in rainforest destruction. BlackRock has also failed to use its influence as a shareholder to push polluters to do better.
"Brazilian indigenous peoples and lands are under immense threat from the beef and soy industries working hand in glove with the Bolsonaro regime to undermine protections that keep our forests standing and our climate stable," said Luiz Eloy Terena, legal counsel for the National Indigenous Organization of Brazil (APIB for its Portuguese acronym) and member of the Terena People, who was able to speak directly to Fink inside the AGM. "When BlackRock funnels investments to these bad actors in Brazil, it is complicit in the destruction of tropical forests and violation of human rights. BlackRock must use its significant influence over these companies to signal that it will not tolerate policies that violate indigenous rights and damage the climate.
During the AGM Terena asked Fink for an audit of the activities of agribusiness companies operating in indigenous territories in Brazil that BlackRock invests in, but Fink refused to respond. Those denied entry to the AGM joined 45 people with New York Communities for Change, Friends of the Earth, Sierra Club, 350, Mothers out Front, and Extinction Rebellion who were gathered outside the meeting to protest. BlackRock has recently been facing increasing criticism for its insufficient actions to address the company's role in the climate crisis, despite Fink's claims about the importance of sustainability and social responsibility. Groups have called on the company to take three main courses of action:
- Begin to shift client investments away from fossil fuels and companies driving deforestation, starting with divesting from coal in actively managed funds
- Rigorously push the companies it owns to align emissions with a 1.5 C world
- Escalate accountability on industry laggards through transparent shareholder engagement, and support key climate shareholder resolutions and board of directors votes
"This is Fink's way of dealing with the climate crisis, block and ignore the stories of those impacted by BlackRock's investments," said Aaron Pedrosa, lawyer and Secretary-General for Sanlakas, who was denied entry to the AGM. "The Philippines is a climate change hotspot consistently figuring in Top 10 of the world's most vulnerable to climate impacts. The influx of more coal investments, with BlackRock as the leading coal investor, glosses over this life-and-death reality. With billions worth of coal investments in the Philippines, Black Rock has the choice to either stop killing our communities or keep funding destruction, death and violence. The decision to fund coal is blood on Black Rock's hands."
Pedrosa noted that the aggressive push of more coal projects by the Duterte Government is aggravating the situation on the ground. In July 2016, Gloria Capitan, an anti-coal advocate in Bataan was shot dead by still unidentified gunman. In December of 2017, Datu Victor Danyan and 7 other indigenous people in Lake Sebu, South Cotabato were killed in what the military claims to be an encounter. Datu Victor and his T'boli-Manobo tribe have been opposing the operation of a coal mine and coffee plantation in their ancestral domain. In 2018, the Philippines has been named by Global Witness as the deadliest place for land and environmental defenders in Asia and second in the world.
Also in at the AGM were former New York State Comptroller Tom Sanzillo, Mary Cerulli from Mothers Out Front, Rachel Rivera from New York Communities for Change, Greenpeace Senior Finance Campaigner focussing on the Indian coal sector Ashish Fernandes, and Amazon Watch's Finance Campaign Director Moira Birss.
"BlackRock is one of the largest global investors in fossil fuels and the dirtiest utilities in the United States. Counter to its talk, BlackRock's actions stand in the way of an equitable transition to clean energy and a livable climate for all children," said Mary Cerulli of Mothers Out Front. "Climate change represents a systemic risk to the economy, and it's long past time for asset managers like BlackRock to take action to address that risk."
New analysis from the BlackRock's Big Problem campaign highlight one aspect of the troubling investment practices spoken about during the meeting by revealing that BlackRock's suite of "sustainable" funds are more greenwash than climate friendly. The research, released this week, examined the equity Environment Social and Governance ("ESG") exchange traded funds marketed by BlackRock in the US and found over $423 million is invested in fossil fuel companies and over $29 million invested in agribusinesses driving deforestation around the world.
The Sierra Club is the most enduring and influential grassroots environmental organization in the United States. We amplify the power of our 3.8 million members and supporters to defend everyone's right to a healthy world.
(415) 977-5500LATEST NEWS
Henry Kissinger Dies at 100 Without Facing Justice for His War Crimes
"A true tally will probably never be known of everyone who died so Kissinger could be national security adviser," wrote journalist Spencer Ackerman.
Nov 30, 2023
Henry Kissinger, the former diplomat whose efforts to prolong and expand the U.S. war on Southeast Asia and undermine democracy in Latin America and elsewhere took millions of lives, died Wednesday at 100 years old.
Treated like royalty in elite U.S. political circles until his death at his home in Connecticut, Kissinger—who served as secretary of state and national security adviser under Nixon and Ford—never faced justice for the secretive carpet bombing of Cambodia that he helped orchestrate, the overthrow of Chile's democratically elected president, or the murderous "dirty war" in Argentina that killed tens of thousands.
The scope of his crimes was so vast that he had to watch where he traveled, lest he be detained to face questioning for his role in assassinations, massacres, and violent military coups whose reverberations are still felt in the present.
"The covert justifications for illegally bombing Cambodia became the framework for the justifications of drone strikes and forever war. It's a perfect expression of American militarism's unbroken circle," historian Greg Grandin, author of "Kissinger's Shadow," toldThe Intercept earlier this year. Grandin has estimated that Kissinger was responsible for at least 3 million deaths.
Observers of Kissinger's impact have said it's difficult to convey the true extent of the destruction he inflicted across the globe.
In his obituary of Kissinger for Rolling Stone, journalist Spencer Ackerman wrote that "measuring purely by confirmed kills, the worst mass murderer ever executed by the United States was the white-supremacist terrorist Timothy McVeigh."
"McVeigh, who in his own psychotic way thought he was saving America, never remotely killed on the scale of Kissinger, the most revered American grand strategist of the second half of the 20th century," Ackerman continued. "Every single person who died in Vietnam between autumn 1968 and the Fall of Saigon—and all who died in Laos and Cambodia, where Nixon and Kissinger secretly expanded the war within months of taking office, as well as all who died in the aftermath, like the Cambodian genocide their destabilization set into motion—died because of Henry Kissinger."
"We will never know what might have been, the question Kissinger's apologists, and those in the U.S. foreign policy elite who imagine themselves standing in Kissinger's shoes, insist upon when explaining away his crimes," he added. "We can only know what actually happened. What actually happened was that Kissinger materially sabotaged the only chance for an end to the war in 1968 as a hedged bet to ensure he would achieve power in Nixon's administration or Humphrey's. A true tally will probably never be known of everyone who died so Kissinger could be national security adviser."
Keep ReadingShow Less
Colorado District Passes First Green New Deal for Schools Resolution
"This is a project of our generation, and we're not gonna stop until every school across the country has a Green New Deal and the kind of schools we deserve," said a 16-year-old student.
Nov 29, 2023
Youth advocates with the Green New Deal for Schools campaign notched up their first victory on Tuesday when Colorado's Boulder Valley School District Board of Trustees unanimously approved a resolution drafted by students at Fairview High School.
"This is a project of our generation, and we're not gonna stop until every school across the country has a Green New Deal and the kind of schools we deserve," said 16-year-old Emma Weber, a student leader in the district. "The Green New Deal for Schools is the kind of action and urgency that we need in order to address the climate crisis and prepare students to live with the realities of it."
The Daily Camerareported that the board's president, Kathy Gebhardt, "urged the students to take their advocacy beyond Boulder Valley to local governments and the state Legislature, saying most school districts in the state are struggling to pay teachers and don't have the resources to add solar panels or buy electric buses."
Colorado Public Radio on Tuesday laid out the long history of such policies in the district, which serves over 30,000 students:
Resolutions on the environment go back to 1978. In 2009, BVSD created a sustainability action plan, with updates in later years with a long-term goal of reducing greenhouse gases by 80% and also committed to a goal of zero net energy by 2050. It was one of the first school districts in the nation to make such a commitment.
As a part of its efforts to track carbon and lower emissions, the district has increased the number of buildings with renewable energy, purchased 19 electric buses, reduced greenhouse gas emissions by a quarter, reduced water consumption by 11% in three years, and hit a target of diverting 50% of waste from landfills. BVSD has already become a leader in providing locally sourced lunch to students.
"The students' resolution asks the district to continue and amplify efforts toward reducing carbon emissions, asking for all school buildings and buses to run on renewable energy," CPR added. "By 2026, they want a comprehensive curriculum for all students in all grades to develop sustainability knowledge and behaviors, including information on how climate change affects communities differently."
The Sunrise Movement—which is behind the national Green New Deal for Schools campaign—said on social media that the resolution also commits the district to "pathways to green union jobs for students, and increased collaboration with local, state, and federal agencies to strengthen responses to climate disasters."
With the resolution, the board is also asking U.S. President Joe Biden—who plans to skip COP28, the United Nations climate summit beginning this week—and Congress "to support the Green New Deal for Public Schools Act, reinforcing the call for a nationwide commitment to an education that prepares our generation to navigate the realities of the climate crisis," according to Sunrise.
Spearheaded by U.S. Sen. Ed Markey (D-Mass.) and Rep. Jamaal Bowman (D-N.Y.), a former educator and principal, the legislation would invest $1.6 trillion to transform the country's education system while "creating 1.3 million jobs and eliminating 78 million metric tons of carbon emissions" over a decade.
While the win in Colorado was a first for the campaign, Sunrise and students across the United States are pushing for more. The group noted Wednesday that young people in dozens of districts—from Bozeman, Montana to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania—have recently testified at school board meetings and attended daylong trainings in cities including Chicago, Illinois; Detroit, Michigan; and Washington D.C.
"Shoutout to the incredible students and their tireless advocacy that led to the Green New Deal for Schools resolution, which passed the Boulder Valley school board this week!" Bowman said Wednesday on social media. "Thank you for your incredible work. Now let's make this happen everywhere!"
Keep ReadingShow Less
'Huge Win for the Planet' as Panama Court Shuts Down Massive Mine
"The people have spoken and expressed that they don't want more mines, that they want sustainable economic development, and have no intention of destroying the country for profit," said one campaigner.
Nov 29, 2023
Indigenous and environmental campaigners this week hailed a landmark win for the Rights of Nature movement, the Panamanian Supreme Court's unanimous ruling that the contract for the Cobré mineral mine—one of the world's largest—is unconstitutional and must be shut down.
The November 24 ruling against Minera Panamá, a subsidiary of the Canadian company First Quantum Minerals, followed weeks of nationwide protests against the open-pit mine, which began operations in 2019 and where mainly copper, but also gold, silver, and molybdenum, are extracted. Opponents say the mine threatens area water supplies. A gunman shot and killed two people at a protest against the mine earlier this month.
Last year, the Cobré mine produced over 86,000 tons of copper, approximately 1% of the world's total production, 5% of Panama's gross domestic product, and 75% of the Central American country's export revenue. More than 2% of Panama's workforce is employed at the mine.
Cobré—which is located in a biodiverse area on Panama's Caribbean coast—will now shut down as a result of the ruling.
"The Panamanian people have spoken," Kherson Ruiz, executive director of the London-based Sustainable Development Foundation, toldMongabay. "The people have spoken and expressed that they don't want more mines, that they want sustainable economic development and have no intention of destroying the country for profit."
Referring to his introduction of Panama's Rights of Nature law, Juan Diego Vásquez Gutiérrez, an independent—and, at age 27, the youngest—member of Panama's National Assembly, said Wednesday that "I am very happy to have been part of a fundamental legal instrument to end the metal mining industry in the country."
"This is one of many tangible effects that we must repeat in defense of the environment thanks to legislation like this," Vásquez added.
Rengifo Navas Revilla, secretary of the National Coordinator of Indigenous Peoples of Panama, said in a statement that "when all this nature is contaminated, we all die."
"Even the planet itself, even Mother Earth herself, dies," he added. "This is the principle that has been instilled in us and that is why we continue to fight."
Since Ecuador became the first country to constitutionally enshrine the Rights of Nature in 2008, more than 30 nations have taken similar actions to protect their environment.
The advocacy groups Leatherback Project and Earth Law Center noted Wednesday that the Panamanian ruling "comes after a similar blocking of a copper mine earlier this year in Ecuador, where a provincial court ruled a mining project violated the constitutional Rights of Nature in the Intag Valley of the tropical Andes."
Constanza Prieto Figelist, Latin America legal director at Earth Law Center—which provided input and expertise on the Rights of Nature as the law was being drafted—said of the Panama ruling that "this case demonstrates that under a Rights of Nature framework, governments must give stronger consideration to the health and intrinsic value of nature when overseeing mining and other activities, elevating the interests of species and ecosystems to a higher status alongside human interests."
"The case also shows that the Rights of Nature can be an effective tool to protect the environment where traditional laws might fall short," she added. "We hope this will inspire other governments to give nature a formal voice and rights in the legal system, as Panama did."
Keep ReadingShow Less
Most Popular