October, 06 2022, 12:03pm EDT
For Immediate Release
Contact:
Ginny Cleaveland, Deputy Press Secretary, Fossil-Free Finance, Sierra Club, ginny.cleaveland@sierraclub.
Local Climate Advocates Respond to Louisiana Treasurer's Move to Cut Ties With Blackrock
Sierra Club, Healthy Gulf, Louisiana Bucket Brigade call the political move a slap in the face to environmental justice communities
WASHINGTON
Today the Louisiana state treasurer announced plans to cut ties with major asset manager BlackRock and withdraw nearly $800 million in state money from the firm due to its stated sustainability policies. The move puts Louisiana in a similar position to other Republican-led states, including Texas and West Virginia, who cut off some business with the asset management firm over its position on environmental, social, and governance (ESG) issues.
Despite some movement by BlackRock to promote sustainable investing, the world's largest asset manager remains a major investor in fossil fuels, even weakening its support for climate-related proposals this shareholder season.
In response to the news, the Sierra Club's Delta Chapter and climate advocates representing frontline community groups in Louisiana issued the following statements:
"Companies like BlackRock incorporate climate and social risk factors into their investment decisions because it makes good business sense -- and because it is the right thing to do. Louisiana is being run by cowards who put their fear before families. Our state treasurer is simply following the lead of other Republican states in veering us off the necessary path to a just transition. This is a slap in the face to environmental justice communities and the frontline leaders fighting for clean air and clean water across this state," said Roishetta Ozane, Southwest Louisiana Organizing Director with Healthy Gulf.
"What a sad state of affairs it is to consider loving your neighbor as being woke. The political backlash over BlackRock including the community and environmental impacts in its investment decisions demonstrate just how deep the polluter industry's hooks are -- and who these politicians really work for. ESG won't destroy Louisiana's economy; politicians delaying economic diversification and the rising seas will," said James Hiatt, Southwest Louisiana Coordinator for the Louisiana Bucket Brigade.
"This move by Louisiana's state treasurer to stop doing business with a financial institution over its sustainable investment policies is just the latest flavor of climate denial cooked up by right-wing politicians and their fossil fuel industry donors. It's part of a broader attempt to prevent free-market businesses like BlackRock from addressing urgent climate-related financial risks that are affecting our state, preventing us from adapting the way Louisianians have done for centuries" said Jessi Parfait, Campaign Representative in the Sierra Club's Beyond Dirty Fuels campaign. "In reality, financial firms like BlackRock continue to be major financiers of fossil fuels, and aren't doing nearly enough to address the destructive impacts of their investments. At the end of the day, when states cut off financial firms to score political points, the real impact is felt by the taxpayers and residents who have to bear the costs of these theatrics."
A study revealed that a similar move in Texas preventing the state from doing business with certain banks that had reduced their business with gun manufacturers ended up costing taxpayers hundreds of millions of dollars in just its first year of implementation.
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More than 300 bodies were reportedly discovered in the mass grave near the Nasser facility in Khan Younis, Gaza, and eyewitnesses said Israeli soldiers executed civilians during their two-week-long raid of al-Shifa last month.
Türk demanded an "independent, effective, and transparent" probe into the killings and mass graves, adding that "given the prevailing climate of impunity, this should include international investigators."
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The IDF's destructive attacks on Nasser and al-Shifa were part of a broader Israeli assault on Gaza's healthcare system. An analysis released Monday by Save the Children found that the rate of monthly Israeli attacks on healthcare in Gaza since October has exceeded that of any other conflict around the world since 2018.
The group estimated that Israel has launched an average of 73 attacks per month on healthcare in Gaza—and at least 435 attacks total since October.
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The House of Commons then passed the bill, and King Charles III is expected to formally approve the legislation in the coming days.
The bill requires courts and immigration officials to "conclusively treat the Republic of Rwanda as a safe country" to send asylum-seekers, even though the Supreme Court ruled in November that people deported to the country would face a significant risk of refoulement, or being sent back to the countries where they originally fled persecution or violence.
The Conservative government signed a treaty with Rwanda last December to strengthen protections for asylum-seekers, including a provision that partially bans Rwanda from sending people back to their home countries.
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At The New Statesman, associate political editor Rachel Cunliffe wrote Tuesday that the tragedy reveals "the flaws of the Rwanda plan," which proponents say could deter migrants from seeking refuge in Britain.
Proponents of the Rwanda plan will inevitably point to today's disaster as further evidence that strong measures are needed to address the issue of Channel crossings. They will accuse Labour and opposition parties of ignoring the human cost of letting this crisis continue and argue that lives are at stake if the government does not act.
[...]
The reality is that a substantial number of people who pay people traffickers large sums of money to crowd them on to a tiny boat do so because they feel they have no other option. Fleeing war and persecution, they are desperate. And so they are prepared to take desperate measures. Measures that sometimes lead to tragedy, but which are deemed necessary given the hopelessness of their situation.
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Clarisse Rosaz Shariyf, PEN America's literary programming chief officer, said in a statement Monday that "we greatly respect that writers have followed their consciences, whether they chose to remain as nominees in their respective categories or not."
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