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The Cowardice of the Financial Elite Could Doom Us All to Climate Hell
For a brief moment, lots of financial leaders said they were going to take steps to address climate change, but when Big Oil pushed back with the help the GOP, they turned tail and ran. It's time for them to turn and fight.
Jan 29, 2026
Any resistance needs to celebrate its victories, and the weekend’s retreat by the administration is a big one: Should the forces of decency ever regain the upper hand in DC, we need a monument to the people of Minneapolis on the National Mall, and busts of Renee Good and Alex Pretti in the Capitol.
And it’s not just the Trump administration that those brave people faced down, it’s the pundit class too, who insisted over and over that progressives should avoid talking about immigration because it wasn’t politically popular. The other subject we’ve been told to sideline is “climate change,” for fear of offending voters more interested in “affordability.” (Former Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm told an industry audience Monday that “on Maslow’s hierarchy of human needs, climate does not rise as much as how much I'm paying for my electricity bill,” which is one of those things that sounds clever until you meet someone who lost their home to a wildfire.)
I actually have no problem with the advice to focus on electric bills—as I wrote a couple of weeks ago, I think affordability, especially of electricity, is an issue that helps both elect Democrats and reduce carbon emissions, since anyone interested in the cost of power is going to be building sun and wind. But I also don’t think that talking about global warming is a mistake—most Americans, polls show, understand the nature of the crisis, and want action to stem it. It isn’t the single most salient issue because all of us live in this particular moment (and in this particular moment the fact that federal agents are executing citizens who dare to take cell phone pictures of them is definitely the most salient issue) but it is nonetheless a net plus for politicians, especially in blue states.
As we were reminded Tuesday morning, when Drew Warshaw, a candidate for New York state comptroller with a long record of building clean energy in the private sector, released a true bombshell report. In it he called for the state to divest its vast pension funds from fossil fuels—and provided the data to show that the failure of the incumbent to do that over the last two decades had cost taxpayers $15 billion in foregone returns. Billion with a b. That’s $750 for every woman, man, and child in the Empire State, all because the longstanding (as in, way too long) state treasurer, Thomas DiNapoli, has ignored the counsel of one expert after another and kept the state invested in Big Oil. (Oh, and since cowardice often consorts with incompetence, another report also finds that DiNapoli has cost the state more than $50 billion by underperforming index funds and giving huge contracts to various advisers.
Always remember, most of the nation’s economy is in places that voted against Trump. It’s a weapon that needs to be used.
A bit of backstory here. Fifteen years ago, some of us launched a fossil fuel divestment campaign. At the beginning the argument was mostly moral: It was wrong to try and make a profit off the end of the world, and if we could convince institutions to sell that stock it would tarnish Big Fossil’s social license.
But it didn’t take long for another argument to emerge. The pension funds, college endowments, and others who joined the movement reported that they were making money as a result, and for a very simple reason: Anything that they put the money into was generating better returns than coal, gas, and oil. And that in turn was for an even simpler reason: Fossil fuel is a faltering industry, because an alternative—the trinity of sun, wind, and batteries—now produces the same product, just cleaner and cheaper. That’s why 95% of new generating capacity around the world last year came from renewables; fossil fuel only has a good year any more if something goes very wrong (the invasion of Ukraine, say).
Anyway, this became the largest anti-corporate effort of its kind in history, with funds representing $41 trillion in investments joining in. Its had powerful effects—when Peabody Coal filed for bankruptcy, for instance, its legal documents listed divestment as a reason. But it also protected the fiscal integrity of the funds that did the right thing—they had more money to pay pensions, provide scholarships, or whatever else. That’s why pension funds in states and entire countries joined in.
Which brings us back to New York. Advocates have put in tens of thousands of person hours explaining to DiNapoli that he should join pension funds in dozens of other places in divesting from fossil fuels, and he has dragged his feet at every turn, with half-measures, occasional strongly-worded letters, and the rest: He is the Chuck Schumer of finance. As Warshaw’s report puts it:
When an investment, and in this case a whole sector of investments, fails to perform over a long period of time and show no realistic signs of turning around, investment managers need to act. Each market cycle over the last two decades has left in its wake less value for fossil fuel companies and less value for fossil fuel investors. This value erosion and strong headwind threats are at the heart of the divestment argument. Why continue to invest in an industry that is now only 2.8% of the market with no plausible strategy to turn things around and a corporate culture that simply that denies the problem even exists? Investment managers need to focus their time on maximizing risk-adjusted returns, not engaging in politically-driven wishful thinking for an industry in permanent decline.
DiNapoli is not alone in his cowardice, of course. For a brief moment—when they were scared by the emergence of Greta’s worldwide movement before the pandemic—lots of financial leaders said they were going to take steps to address climate change. BlackRock, for instance, the biggest investor in the world, which has the power should it choose to use it, to make vast change fast. (BlackRock’s wealth is roughly twice the continent of Africa’s). Here’s what Larry Fink, CEO of BlackRock, said in 2020:
Climate change has become a defining factor in companies’ long-term prospects. Last September, when millions of people took to the streets to demand action on climate change, many of them emphasized the significant and lasting impact that it will have on economic growth and prosperity–a risk that markets to date have been slower to reflect. But awareness is rapidly changing, and I believe we are on the edge of a fundamental reshaping of finance.
The evidence on climate risk is compelling investors to reassess core assumptions about modern finance. Research from a wide range of organizations–including the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the BlackRock Investment Institute, and many others, including new studies from McKinsey on the socioeconomic implications of physical climate risk–is deepening our understanding of how climate risk will impact both our physical world and the global system that finances economic growth.
Will cities, for example, be able to afford their infrastructure needs as climate risk reshapes the market for municipal bonds? What will happen to the 30-year mortgage–a key building block of finance–if lenders can’t estimate the impact of climate risk over such a long timeline, and if there is no viable market for flood or fire insurance in impacted areas? What happens to inflation, and in turn interest rates, if the cost of food climbs from drought and flooding? How can we model economic growth if emerging markets see their productivity decline due to extreme heat and other climate impacts?
Investors are increasingly reckoning with these questions and recognizing that climate risk is investment risk.
But then what happened? Big Oil pushed back, in the form of red state treasurers promising to pull their money from BlackRock. Suddenly Fink turned tail and ran. By now he’s part of President Donald Trump’s inner circle. As Pilita Clark explained in that radical journal the Financial Times over the weekend, DiNapoli and Fink’s failure of courage is endemic across too much of the American elite landscape:
This failure is not due to a shortage of scientific understanding or technological breakthroughs. It is because we lack the political changes needed to put financial systems and economies on to paths that avoid burning fossil fuels. Achieving those changes is inordinately difficult.
Public support from large businesses is important. Ultimately, staying quiet at a time like this is self-defeating. It undermines the global institutions needed to address a growing global climate problem that poses serious financial threats.
David Gelles, in the Times, has another sad account of this collective failure of nerve on Wall Street, and it’s well worth reading. As he writes:
Republican legislatures around the country introduced more than 100 bills to penalize financial companies that supported ESG practices. Republican state treasurers around the country began pulling money out.
This is the company DiNapoli keeps, and the people he apparently listens to—again, he’s a lot more like Chuck Schumer than he should be. So it’s very good news that insurgent candidate Warshaw is talking about bringing New York State’s financial might to bear—in part because it amplifies the message being sent by Mark Levine, new comptroller of the city of New York. Levine’s predecessor Brad Lander, who already led the divestment from fossil fuel companies, late in his tenure called for the city to ditch BlackRock, and Levine seems to be interested in following through.
Together, the pension funds of New York City and New York state control far more resources than the funds of the various red states combined. If they manage to put effective pressure on the oil industry and the finance industry, it will have enormous impact—it will aid enormously in the climate fight and it will undercut Trump. And it will encourage other blue state leaders to do likewise: Always remember, most of the nation’s economy is in places that voted against Trump. It’s a weapon that needs to be used.
And New York can do so without putting anyone’s pension at risk—under the Empire State’s laws, the comptroller has to pay pensions in full no matter what happens to his investment portfolio, so there’s no danger Warshaw will do anything except save taxpayers large sums of money. (And Warshaw is not alone; the other Dem in the primary, Raj Goyle, has called for divestment too, though not with the same depth of analysis). This is a no-brainer, except if you’re stuck in your ways.
I helped found an organization devoted to elder action on behalf of climate and democracy; obviously I don’t think age disqualifies one from office. But DiNapoli is 71 and he represents the greatest danger of long tenure in office: a stultification of ideas, an inability to see new facts, a stubborn attachment to old ideas. It’s time for him, finally, to get out of the way, or to be voted out.
The climate fight, even in this country, is very far from over. The basic premise of that battle—that we must move swiftly away from the moral and financial sinkhole of Big Oil—is still clear and powerful.
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Facing the Climate Crisis, Can We Make Politics Move Faster Than Physics?
As Tehran runs low on water, New York City considers divesting from planet-wrecker Blackrock. We need more of the latter to prevent more of the former.
Nov 29, 2025
We are not getting out of the climate crisis without immense amounts of damage—the only question at this point is whether we can extricate ourselves with something like our civilizations intact. And the news from one cradle of civilization isn’t heartening: In Iran, where urban settlements date back to 4400 BC, the deepest drought in the country’s recorded history has now reached the havoc stage.
Tehran, shrouded in truly toxic smoke because the country’s power plants have run short of natural gas and begun burning “mazut, a dark residue of petroleum high in sulphur and other impurities,” is now facing a possible evacuation because it has run out of water. As Yeaganeh Torbati points out in an excellent essay, Iran’s water woes are deeply rooted in agricultural policy that prioritized irrigation above all (see also California); its international isolation has not helped it cope (including with the tragic fires that broke out last week in the Hyrcanian Forest, one of the oldest woodlands on Earth and a biodiversity hotspot). But the savage drought has been the final domino here, in a country where, as the head of one water utility points out, “Higher than normal heat has intensified the evaporation of water resources.” As the Australia Broadcasting Corporation summarized it:
Faced with a perfect storm of weather woes and decades of mismanagement, President Masoud Pezeshkian issued a warning to his country earlier this month that the situation could deteriorate even further.
“We’ve run short of water. If it doesn’t rain, we in Tehran… must start rationing,” he said.
“Even if we do ration and it still does not rain, then we will have no water at all."
“They [citizens] must evacuate Tehran.”
While it may seem like an exaggeration, it is the shocking reality facing the Iranian population—particularly in its capital, which has in excess of 15 million people across the broader metropolitan area.
This particular kind of disaster is becoming more common on a rapidly warming world. We’ve already had severe Day Zero scares in big cities in Brazil and South Africa; a new study earlier this month warns that:
Moments when water levels in reservoirs fall so low that water may no longer reach homes—could become common as early as this decade and the 2030s.
To find out where and when DZDs are most likely to occur, scientists at the Center for Climate Physics in Busan, South Korea ran a series of large-scale climate simulations. They considered the imbalance between decreasing natural supply (such as years of below-average rainfall and depleted river flows).
By some estimates, 2 billion humans are at risk.
The residents of New York are not at present among them. The city’s water supply system is one of the miracles of the modern world, and after six decades the “third tunnel” that will make that water system more secure is almost complete. (As a cub reporter in the early 1980s I spent several happy days underground, watching "sandhogs" from Local 147 blowing up rock walls to extend the shaft).
But that doesn’t mean New York is immune from climate danger, as anyone who lived there during Hurricane Sandy will recall. (As the financial journal Business Week printed in block letters on its cover the week after that catastrophe, “IT’S GLOBAL WARMING STUPID”).
And it certainly doesn’t mean that New York isn’t part of the cause of the global climate collapse. Not from its emissions—subway-riding New Yorkers are fairly green—but from the churn of capital through its financial markets that underwrites the ongoing expansion of the fossil fuel enterprise, in ways that scientists have said for years now simply has to stop.
A huge step in the right direction came Wednesday morning, when the city’s comptroller, Brad Lander, announced that he was recommending the city stop investing its money with Blackrock, the largest single representative of irresponsible capitalism on planet Earth.
Lander is urging three of the city’s pension funds to drop BlackRock Inc. because of “inadequate” climate plans, the latest move to penalize investment firms for failing to tackle global warming.
The guidance to reject BlackRock, the city’s largest money manager overseeing $42.3 billion of index funds for the pensions, follows a review of the firm’s efforts to press companies to decarbonize. Lander said Wednesday he’s also asking plan trustees to terminate much smaller mandates with Fidelity Investments and PanAgora Asset Management.
It’s hard to overstate the importance of this decision. To call Blackrock a “giant” is to pitifully underestimate its size—it has $13.46 trillion under management as of this fall. It owns 10% of the world’s stock market. If it wanted to stop the expansion of the fossil fuel industry, it could, more easily than any other single entity on planet Earth.
Instead it has dithered endlessly, making occasional noises of climate concern and then backtracking when red state treasurers (with far smaller portfolios than Lander’s to wave around) squawked at them. In August, Democratic officials from a dozen states sent warning letters to asset managers, calling on them to “reject pressure from the Trump administration and GOP lawmakers, and instead commit to thorough evaluations of risks tied to global warming, supply chains, and corporate governance.” Lander’s recommendation is the first concrete outcome.
Or, fairly concrete. Lander’s term ends on December 31. The advocates who have pressed for this policy—especially New York Communities for Change—are pushing him to get one of the city’s three pension plans—the New York City Employees Retirement System or NYCERS—to actually commit to the plan at its December 17 meeting. They think that with some prodding by Lander the votes are there to make the change.
If anyone has the political credibility to get it done before Christmas, that would be Brad Lander. Though he finished third in the primary, he emerged from this year’s mayoral contest with more love than any player in the city, maybe even including Zohran Mamdani. Partly that was because stood up for immigrants early, getting arrested by an Immigration and Customs Enforcement thug. Mostly it was because he figured out he was going to lose to Mamdani, took it with exceptionally good grace, and ended up playing the important role of his being his verifier—assuring people with both his insider and his Jewish credentials that the young socialist was up to the job. He comes out of 2025 both a macher and a mensch, and now he’s rumored to be planning a run for Congress; assuming he ties up some of the loose ends here, he will take on any future race with the fervent support of the environmental community, for whom he has delivered big-time. (And with the fervent opposition of Wall Street, which is proving to be a useful credential in itself).
In a larger sense, I’ve been reading accounts for months now of how climate is dead as a political issue. I think this move makes clear that isn’t true; in fact, I’d wager that as energy affordability takes center stage in next year’s midterms, the transition off fossil fuels will be a key issue for progressives to seize.
They will need to do so quickly. As events in Tehran make clear, time is now moving fast. The physics of global warming are implacable: Run out of water and you have to move your city. We’ll have to make politicians move fast to have any hope of getting ahead of the curve.
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Why Save for Retirement If You'll Be Living in a Climate Hellscape?
Only by making investments in climate resilience and clean energy can asset managers like BlackRock truly protect the retirement savings of everyday Americans.
Jun 03, 2025
Every spring, Larry Fink, CEO of the world's largest asset manager BlackRock, publishes his annual letter to investors, often heralded as an indicator of where the financial industry is headed. This year, Fink focused on the need to "democratize" investing by giving regular people more access to invest in private markets, meaning businesses outside of stock exchanges.
Fink argued this move would not only help more people save more money for retirement, but that these investments are necessary to help meet the growing need for financing for the infrastructure and energy needs of the future. Unfortunately, his take on the energy needs of the future is concerning, emphasizing fossil fuel pipelines and infrastructure and AI data centers, while casting doubt on renewables.
Democratizing investing is a noble goal, but Fink's annual letter misses a key point: A secure retirement isn't just about the money you save, it's about retiring into a world you want to live in, with healthy communities and a livable climate. By failing to encourage investments that help facilitate the transition to a clean energy economy and create green jobs, BlackRock's efforts will undermine the long-term success of our financial markets and threaten the ability of everyday Americans to retire with dignity. If asset managers like BlackRock truly want to help people retire, they must uplift investments that increase returns for individuals AND help build a future where everyone thrives.
America's Investment Landscape
In pushing forward BlackRock's agenda on private markets, Fink's annual letter conveniently ignores two critical realities.
The first is the growing problem of economic inequality in the United States. The difficulty so many Americans face in reaching their saving and investing goals has less to do with limited access to private markets, and more to do with our egregious income divide. Right now, the top 1% holds nearly as much wealth as the bottom 90%. Helping more people be financially secure in retirement begins with investing in our communities and climate solutions to help create green jobs so that more people have the resources they need to save.
The second is the growing need for financing for, and opportunities to invest in, climate resilience and the clean energy transition. This includes everything from renewable energy infrastructure to disaster-proof buildings and climate-resilient farming.
True retirement security comes not only from individual savings, but from living in a world where our investments foster a safe and thriving future for all.
Estimates show global investments in clean energy must reach $4 trillion annually by 2030 to hit global climate goals. Although this goal may seem huge, reaching it is necessary to prevent much larger losses to our economy. By 2050, without further action, climate damages could permanently shrink economic output by 20%, cost $38 trillion annually, and slash global stocks by 50%. This translates to trillions of dollars lost annually due to extreme weather, damaged infrastructure, and lower productivity. Alongside these widespread economic losses, retirement savings would take a major hit. In other words, failing to invest in the transition to a clean energy economy will make our communities—and our savings—much worse off.
Instead of focusing his annual letter on private markets, Fink should have focused on the investments necessary to support the long-term financial security and peace of mind for the millions of people he claims he wants to help save for retirement. Only by making investments in climate resilience and clean energy can asset managers like BlackRock truly protect the retirement savings of everyday Americans.
Financial Security Goes Beyond the Numbers
Retiring with dignity is not merely about having the financial security to live comfortably. It's also about the broader environment in which people live and age, which is something Fink apparently forgets. It's not only about having investment portfolios that can weather climate-related risks, but about having thriving communities and flourishing economies to retire in: cities with liveable temperatures, modern buildings, and plentiful clean energy, and people with access to good jobs, quality education, and affordable housing.
Financial security isn't just about having a diversified portfolio and a comfortable nest egg—it's intricately linked to the health of the environment. Ignoring climate risks jeopardizes the well-being of future retirees and the communities they call home. True retirement security comes not only from individual savings, but from living in a world where our investments foster a safe and thriving future for all.
To truly democratize investing, asset managers like BlackRock must direct their investment strategies to support climate resilience and the clean energy transition and provide prosperity for all Americans, within individual portfolios and beyond.
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Trump Orders US Military to Plan Invasion of Panama to Seize Canal: Report
U.S. officials familiar with the planning said options for "reclaiming" the vital waterway include close cooperation with Panama's military and, absent that, possible war.
Mar 13, 2025
President Donald Trump has directed the Pentagon to prepare plans for carrying out his threat to "take back" the Panama Canal, including by military force if needed, two U.S. officials familiar with the situation told NBC News Thursday.
According to the outlet, the officials said that U.S. Southern Command (SOUTHCOM) is drawing up potential plans that run the gamut from working more closely with Panama's military to a less likely scenario in which U.S. troops invade the country and take the canal by force. They also said that SOUTHCOM commander Adm. Alvin Holsey has presented draft strategies to be reviewed by U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, who is scheduled to visit Panama next month.
The officials explained that the likelihood of a U.S invasion depended on the level of cooperation shown by the Panamanian military.
Trump has repeatedly refused to rule out use of military force to seize control of the vital U.S.-built waterway, as well as Greenland, an autonomous territory of NATO ally Denmark.
Last week during his joint address to Congress, Trump proclaimed that "to further enhance our national security, my administration will be reclaiming the Panama Canal," but his administration has not clarified precisely what "reclaiming" entails.
The Republican president says the U.S. needs to retake control of the Panama Canal to enhance "economic security," and has falsely claimed that the waterway is "operated by China."
Earlier this month, the New York-based investment firm BlackRock led a group of investors in a $23 billion deal to purchase ports at both ends of the Panama Canal from a Hong Kong-based conglomerate, an agreement Trump dubiously seized upon as proof that "we've already started" reclaiming the conduit.
Panamanian President José Raúl Molina countered that "the Panama Canal is not in the process of being reclaimed... The canal is Panamanian and will continue to be Panamanian!"
The U.S. controlled what was formerly called the Panama Canal Zone from the time of the waterway's construction in the early 20th century—largely done by Afro-Caribbean workers, thousands of whom died in what's widely known as the world's deadliest construction project—until then-President Jimmy Carter transferred sovereignty to Panama in the late 1970s. Under the Torrijos-Carter treaties, the U.S. reserves the right to use military force to defend the canal's neutrality.
The United States has repeatedly used deadly military force in Panama over the decades, including during a 1964 student-led uprising against American control in which 22 Panamanians and four U.S. soldiers were killed, and in a full-scale invasion in 1989 ordered by then-President George H.W. Bush to capture erstwhile ally and CIA asset turned narcotrafficking dictator Manuel Noriega. The U.S. invaders killed hundreds of Panamanians, including many civilians.
Writing for Americas Quarterly this week, Panamanian jurist Alonso E. Illueca argued that Panama's efforts to appease Trump aren't working. These include the BlackRock deal and other moves like quitting China's "Belt and Road" initiative, taking in third-country migrants deported by the U.S., backing a U.S. resolution on Ukraine at the United Nations Security Council, auditing the country's ports, and revisiting a railway project originally developed by the Chinese government.
"Panama should abandon its accommodating policy towards the U.S., which can only lead to escalating demands to banish Chinese influence, to the detriment of Panama's national sovereignty," Illueca asserted.
"An alternative policy for Panama is to align with the rules based international order," he continued. "This includes establishing synergies with like-minded states which have been also affected by U.S. actions such as Canada, Mexico, Greenland, and Denmark. The country should seek to transcend the U.S.-China binary and find alternatives for alliances, which should include partners like the European Union."
"In short," Illueca added, "the way forward for Panama lies in replacing strategic dissonance with strategic clarity."
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21 Private Equity Firms Fund Over a Gigaton of Annual Climate Pollution
"Private equity firms and their executives are making billions by investing public employees' retirement money into planet-destroying fossil fuel assets," said one researcher.
Oct 01, 2024
The energy portfolios of over 20 top U.S. private equity firms are responsible for an estimated combined 1.17 gigatons of annual greenhouse gas emissions—more than three times as much as from the energy used to power every home in the United States, according to a report published Tuesday.
The report, titled Private Equity Risks Scorecard 2024, was published by Researchers for the Americans for Financial Reform Education Fund, Global Energy Monitor, and the Private Equity Stakeholder Project. The scorecard examines the energy portfolios of 21 leading U.S. private equity firms, which manage a combined total of over $6 trillion worth of companies.
"At the end of the day, the price we pay for private equity's greed is our health and livelihoods, for ourselves and generations to come."
"Private equity firms and their executives are making billions by investing public employees' retirement money into planet-destroying fossil fuel assets," Amanda Mendoza, senior climate research and campaign coordinator of the Private Equity Stakeholder Project, said in a statement.
"These billion-dollar companies make their profits while largely avoiding liability for the damages their fossil fuel investing causes frontline communities," Mendoza added. "At the end of the day, the price we pay for private equity's greed is our health and livelihoods, for ourselves and generations to come."
According to the report, the five biggest investors in annual climate polluters are EIG Global Energy Partners, the Carlyle Group/NGP Energy Capital, Brookfield/Oakfield Capital Management, Quantum Capital Group, and BlackRock Private Equity Partners. These five firms each funded at least 100 million metric tons of CO2 equivalent (CO2e) annually.
Some of these companies, most notably BlackRock, rank among the
world's biggest investors in fossil fuels.
"Private equity continues to transform the financial markets and the daily lives of communities around the globe," the report states. "With over a trillion dollars in energy investments generating high greenhouse gas emissions and minimal public visibility, private equity firms play an outsized role in accelerating the climate crisis."
"The private equity energy portfolios covered in this report are responsible for an estimated combined total of 1.17 gigatons of annual emissions," the publication continues. "This figure equals 1.17 billion metric tons CO2 equivalent (CO2e) and is limited to the three categories covered in the scope of this research: upstream, liquefied natural gas terminals, and coal plants, and do not represent the firms' entire emissions footprint from energy investments."
"In the U.S. alone, there were 28 weather and climate disasters in 2023, resulting in at least $92.9 billion in disaster damages, according to the National Centers for Environmental Information," the report notes. "The need for transparency, accountability, and a just transition to a clean energy economy has never been more urgent."
The scorecard's authors and 22 supporting organizations—including Food & Water Watch, Friends of the Earth U.S., Greenpeace USA, LittleSis, Public Citizen, Rainforest Action Network, and Sierra Club—urge sources of capital, such as public pension funds and institutional investors, to commit to a series of climate-friendly policies and practices.
These include:
- Aligning with science-based climate targets to limit global warming to 1.5°C;
- Disclosing fossil fuel exposure, emissions, and impacts;
- Reporting a portfolio-wide energy transition plan;
- Integrating climate and environmental justice; and
- Providing transparency on political spending and climate lobbying.
"While companies like banks and oil majors face pressure over their climate risks and fossil fuel emissions, private equity firms continue to dodge the spotlight, pouring billions into fossil fuels and pushing us further from a sustainable future," said Global Emergy Monitor's Alex Hurley.
"These firms may operate in the shadows, but the public has a right to know how private equity's debt-fueled extraction of both resources and wealth threatens our climate, communities, and financial stability," Hurley added. "We call on private equity firms to adopt climate standards... and retire any fossil fuel assets in their portfolios in short order."
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Report Names Institutions Behind $4.3 Trillion in Climate-Wrecking Investments
"Investors need to draw a red line on fossil fuel expansion and they need to do it now," said an author of the report, which cites Vanguard and BlackRock as the largest institutional investors in fossil fuel companies.
Jul 09, 2024
Institutional investors including the Vanguard Group and BlackRock collectively own $4.3 trillion in the stocks and bonds of fossil fuel companies, according to a report released Tuesday by Urgewald, a nonprofit based in Germany.
Urgewald and partner nonprofits tracked investments into nearly 3,000 companies in the coal, oil, and gas sectors for Investing in Climate Chaos 2024, a report that follows on similar research they published last year.
The $4.3 trillion in financing jeopardizes the quick phaseout of fossil fuels that's necessary to avoid unmanageable climate breakdown, the report says.
"If institutional investors continue backing companies that are still expanding their coal, oil, and gas operations, it will be impossible to phase out fossil fuels in time," Katrin Ganswindt, Urgewald's head of financial research, said in the report. "Investors need to draw a red line on fossil fuel expansion and they need to do it now."
🆕 Investing In Climate Chaos reveals top investors in coal, oil and gas.
👉 Discover who they are & the full report:https://t.co/ix94o84YtT
📢 Calling on all investors to stop all forms of financial support (bonds, loans...) to companies developing new fossil fuel projects. pic.twitter.com/VsRmXD41tl
— Reclaim Finance (@ReclaimFinance) July 9, 2024
Urgewald looked at the holdings of more than 7,500 institutional investors worldwide including "pension funds, insurance companies, asset managers, hedge funds, sovereign wealth funds, endowment funds, and asset management arms of commercial banks" as of May 2024.
The true investment total may be higher than $4.3 trillion, given the lack of transparency in bond markets; the report authors estimated that they only included 20-30% of actual bond holding in fossil fuel companies.
Of the $4.3 trillion, more than half was invested by U.S.-based companies. In fact, $1.1 trillion was held by just four companies: Vanguard, BlackRock, State Street, and Capital Group—dubbed "the filthy four" by Urgewald—each of which had more than $160 billion in fossil fuel investment holdings.
Alec Connon, co-director of Stop the Money Pipeline, said the outsized role of the U.S. was the result of poor governance.
"This mirrors the complete lack of action by U.S. regulators to effectively monitor and address the climate and transition risks of large institutional investors," Connon said in the report. "This inaction lays the ground for the next economic crisis and puts the world on a fast track towards climate chaos."
Nearly $4 trillion of the $4.3 trillion in holdings went to companies that are actively developing new fossil fuel projects, not just tapping existing projects, though the report doesn't specify how much actually went toward new development; many companies do both.
In any case, it's clear that new development abounds: Companies have increased capital expenditure on oil and gas exploration by more than 30% since 2021. ExxonMobil, among the biggest beneficiaries of the institutional investing documented in the report, alone spends $1.4 billion annually searching for new reserves in 37 countries, the publication says.
All of this is in spite of pledges to "transition away" from fossil fuels, as countries agreed to do at the United Nations climate summit in Dubai in December. Environmental campaigners are trying to use those pledges, loophole-ridden as they may be, to pressure institutional investors and regulators to take action.
"The question is, will institutional investors continue snapping up bonds of companies like Saudi Aramco, ExxonMobil, or TotalEnergies whose business model relies on heating up the planet?" the report's authors asked. "Or will pension funds, insurers, and asset managers realize that these investments will produce more heatwaves, more catastrophic floods, more climate disasters?"
Urgewald is one of the NGOs that produces the annual Banking on Climate Chaos report, the latest publication of which found that big banks shoveled nearly $7 trillion into fossil fuel companies in the eight years after the Paris agreement was signed in 2015. That report, released in May, showed that major banks including JPMorgan Chase and Citigroup together financed fossil fuel companies to the tune of $705 billion in 2023, the hottest year on record.
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'Out-of-Touch Billionaire' Larry Fink Blasted for Calling 65 a 'Crazy' Retirement Age
"I love how rich people are treated as sources of great wisdom when they obviously don't know their ass from their elbow," said one economist.
Mar 26, 2024
Larry Fink, the billionaire CEO of the world's largest asset management firm, wrote in his annual letter to investors on Tuesday that it is "a bit crazy" that 65 is viewed as a sensible retirement age in the United States, drawing swift backlash from Social Security defenders and policy analysts.
Dean Baker, senior economist at the Center for Economic and Policy Research, replied that the CEO of BlackRock apparently doesn't know the U.S. already raised the full retirement age for Social Security to 67 under a law passed during the Reagan administration—a change that inflicted benefit cuts across the board.
"I love how rich people are treated as sources of great wisdom when they obviously don't know their ass from their elbow," Baker wrote on social media.
While Fink, who is 71, wrote that "no one should have to work longer than they want to," he argued that "our conception of retirement" must change, pointing specifically to the Netherlands' decision to gradually raise its retirement age and tie it to life expectancy. (Fink does not mention that life expectancy in the U.S. has been trending downward in recent years.)
"When people are regularly living past 90, what should the average retirement age be?" Fink wrote. "How do we encourage more people who wish to work longer, with carrots rather than sticks?"
Alex Lawson, executive director of the progressive advocacy group Social Security Works, told Common Dreams in response to the BlackRock CEO's letter that "Larry Fink is the definition of an out-of-touch billionaire."
"He is welcome to work as long as he wants to, but that doesn't mean that everyone else—including people who do demanding physical labor—should work until they die," said Lawson.
"Half of Americans age 65 and older are living on less than $30,000 per year. This is absurd. Congress must expand Social Security."
Roughly half of older Americans have no retirement savings, a fact that Fink acknowledged in his letter.
While progressive lawmakers such as Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) have called on policymakers to expand Social Security benefits by forcing rich people like Fink to contribute more to the program, the BlackRock CEO argued that the private sector and federal government should team up to "ensure that future generations can live out their final years with dignity."
"What should that national effort do? I don't have all the answers," Fink added. "But what I do have is some data and the beginnings of a few ideas from BlackRock’s work. Because our core business is retirement."
Fink's letter comes days after the Republican Study Committee—a panel comprised of around 80% of the House GOP caucus—released a budget proposal calling for "modest adjustments to the retirement age for future retirees to account for increases in life expectancy" in a purported bid to "secure Social Security solvency for decades to come."
But progressives argue that rather than slashing benefits for new retirees to shore up the program, Congress should lift the payroll tax cap that allows the ultra-rich to pay the same amount into Social Security as someone who makes $168,600 a year.
Fink, for example, has a base salary of around $1.5 million. With the current payroll tax cap in place, Fink stopped paying into Social Security less than a month and a half into 2024.
"In the U.S. today, 12 million seniors are dealing with food insecurity," Sanders wrote on social media Tuesday. "Half of Americans age 65 and older are living on less than $30,000 per year. This is absurd. Congress must expand Social Security."
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Biden and Wall Street: End Fossil Fuels or Expect Resistance
Now is the time to keep building momentum and bringing a lot more pressure to bear, because we’ve hardly won yet.
Oct 02, 2023
The rain was pouring down hard, but that didn’t seem to deter the big protest crowd gathered outside the Federal Reserve building. Amid the typical Monday morning bustle of Wall Street, we chanted for the Fed to stop fossil fuel financing as cops arrested row after row of protesters blocking the building’s entrances during what ultimately became the largest climate-focused civil disobedience ever in New York City.
We were coming off the 75,000-person March to End Fossil Fuels the previous day: a protest that shattered our attendance expectations as organizers, uplifted our spirits, and landed on the front page of The New York Times the next day. Earlier that week, hundreds of activists and groups like Climate Defenders, Oil & Gas Action Network, Stop the Money Pipeline, and my own, New York Communities for Change, had disrupted two of the largest fossil fuel financiers in the world, shutting down Citi’s global headquarters for a whole morning and halting traffic in front of BlackRock’s global HQ. With Planet Over Profit, a youth-led group I co-founded, we forced the Museum of Modern Art to close for an afternoon because of its ties to dirty fossil fuel investor KKR. And the morning after shutting down the Fed, another dirty financier, Bank of America, found its New York office the site of another act of civil disobedience.
Others reflecting on these protests have noted how this September felt like a potential turning point. The U.S. climate movement enjoyed the biggest revival of street protest since the pandemic. With the march, unlike previous climate mass mobilizations, we were laser focused on calling out a specific decision-maker (President Joe Biden), making it impossible for him to ignore the broad-based, diverse support for our laser-focused specific demand (ending fossil fuels). And when it came to Wall Street, with thousands of white-collar Citi employees unable to get into work for hours, for example, we made it clear that if Citi’s bottom line included profiting off fossil fuels, then that bottom line would not go undisrupted.
If we’re to have any chance of ending fossil fuels, and transitioning to a more just system, we need sustained, committed resistance against these fossil fuel-loving powers that be.
We sent a statement of intent to both Biden and Wall Street: End fossil fuels, or expect resistance. Now it’s time to keep building on that momentum, and bring a lot more pressure to bear, because we’ve hardly won yet.
Politicians continue to approve new fossil fuel permits, and financiers continue to move more fossil fuel financing. It’s not for lack of awareness: These are well-informed elites who know well the scientific consensus that we have already maxed out our carbon budget with existing projects and that our carbon accounts cannot afford any more fossil fuel expansion. Nor do the actual financials necessitate fossil fuels: Power from renewables is now cheaper to produce than power from fossil fuels in many places, and besides, we simply cannot enjoy stable, functional global economies on a planet beset by endless storms and fires, widespread drought and famine, and hundreds of millions crossing borders to flee unlivable conditions.
The simple reason the fossil fuel industry and its enablers won’t change course on their own is because the status quo is working splendidly for them right now. Oil majors have been reporting record-breaking profits, and generally speaking, elites have continued to consolidate their wealth and power within a global political economy still powered largely by fossil fuels. (For instance, in 2015, the richest 1% in the world owned as much as the remaining 99% combined; those state of affairs have only worsened during a pandemic during which those at the top gained trillions in wealth while ordinary people suffered.)
Plus, these planet-wrecking elites, as Andreas Malm writes, “do not worry at the sight of islands sinking; they do not run from the roar of the approaching hurricanes; their fingers never need to touch the stalks from withered harvests; their mouths do not become sticky and dry after a day with nothing to drink.” The climate crisis may be coming for the whole world over at some point—but those at the very top do not currently face many serious consequences, and many of them may assume that they never really will in their lifetimes. Meanwhile, there are fossil fuel lobbies to please, and fossil fuel profits to reap.
So: We’re up against immensely powerful fossil fuel executives and some of the most powerful financiers and politicians in the world. All of them are highly incentivized to maintain the status quo of enabling mass death. If we’re to have any chance of ending fossil fuels, and transitioning to a more just system, we need sustained, committed resistance against these fossil fuel-loving powers that be.
If you are a bank like Citi that continually pours billions into fossil fuels each year: You should not expect to be able to operate and greenwash without having your bottom line impacted and the lives of your business elite constantly disrupted. Your CEOs and execs should expect to be challenged at public events, your offices’ operations should be continually disturbed, your brand and client deals should be scrutinized and protested. If you are Biden, who approves climate bomb after climate bomb, you and your administration should assume there will be disruptions at your public appearances and lagging enthusiasm from your base to turn out to the polls next fall.
What hangs in the balance, after all, is everything we know and love. We want to enjoy safe, stable societies; we want to breathe clean air, drink clean water; we want to live rich, dignified lives uninterrupted by profound climate upheaval. And we won’t be able to do that for much longer on this planet if we don’t force a move away from fossil fuels with serious, sustained pressure.
We don’t live in a world yet in which fossil fuel-loving politicians and capitalists face constant, sustained pressure, direct action, and disruption of business-as-usual. So let’s keep rolling up our sleeves. Let’s keep organizing more people. And let’s keep escalating with more hard-hitting protest to force an end to fossil fuels. If they don’t at the moment have enough incentive to give up their profits to save our lives—well, then let’s create some incentive for them.
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Thousands Evacuated After Chemical Leak and Massive Fire at 'Cancer Alley' Oil Refinery
"Such events are an all-too-common and exceptionally dangerous reality for those living within fossil fuel and petrochemical 'sacrifice zones,'" observed one researcher.
Aug 25, 2023
A mandatory evacuation was ordered for thousands of people living within a two-mile radius of a Marathon Petroleum refinery in Louisiana's so-called "Cancer Alley" after a chemical leak and massive fire broke out at a storage tank there on Friday.
The temporary evacuation order, which Marathon Petroleum called "precautionary," followed a leak of naphtha—a hazardous and highly flammable liquid hydrocarbon mixture—and blaze at the refinery in Garyville in St. John the Baptist Parish, located about 45 miles upriver from New Orleans.
About 8,660 people live within two miles of the refinery, according to Nola.com. One of them, 42-year-old Lashonda Melancon, said she was trying to figure out where to go with her 14-year-old daughter.
"I've got asthma bad and this is not good for me," she said.
People living near the refinery said flames could be seen dozens of feet in the air. The smoke plume from the disaster was visible from outer space.
Marathon Petroleum said in a statement: "The release and fire are contained within the refinery's property and there have been no injuries. As a precaution, air monitoring has been deployed in the community. No off-site impacts have been detected. All regulatory notifications have been made."
However, contained does not mean controlled—the latter means extinguished—and Marathon Petroleum spokesperson Justin Lawrence said the company did not know when the blaze would be put out.
Operational since 1977, the 200,000-barrel-per-day facility is the newest oil refinery in the United States. Marathon Petroleum's three biggest shareholders are the Vanguard Group, SSgA Funds Management, and Blackrock, private equity firms that have come under fire for financing fossil fuel expansion during a worsening climate emergency.
In May, Reuters reported there had been 13 U.S. refinery fires in 2023, the majority of them along the Gulf Coast.
St. John the Baptist Parish is located in what's known as Cancer Alley or Death Alley, a swath of predominantly Black parishes—the Louisiana equivalent of counties—between New Orleans and Baton Rouge containing nearly 150 oil refineries and plastics and chemical plants, many of them located along or near the Mississippi River.
In neighboring St. James Parish, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has reported an 800% cancer hazard increase due to petrochemical facilities in the parish between 2007 and 2018.
The area is also known as a "sacrifice zone," or place where polluting industrial facilities are built in close proximity to residents—usually people of color or those with low income.
Responding to the disaster, Antonia Juhasz, senior fossil fuel researcher at Human Rights Watch, wrote on the social platform formerly known as Twitter that "such events are an all-too-common and exceptionally dangerous reality for those living within fossil fuel and petrochemical 'sacrifice zones.'"
Anne Rolfes, executive director of the Louisiana Bucket Brigade, a frontline community advocacy group, said in a statement that "the petrochemical industry is here in Louisiana for one reason only: To make as much money as possible."
"As long as the state of Louisiana continues to look away from fires and mushroom clouds, these accidents will continue," she continued. "I have been dealing with this for nearly a quarter of a century. There are terrible accidents, workers are burned alive, and the state of Louisiana does nothing."
"Workers and residents are left to bear the brunt of the industry's negligence and predatory expansion that continue to jeopardize our health and safety," Rolfes added.
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Latest BlackRock Board Appointment Shows Truth Is Worse Than Conspiracy Theory
While our planet was experiencing its hottest month of all time, the Earth’s biggest pile of cash named to its board of directors the CEO of the world’s largest oil company, Saudi Aramco.
Jul 24, 2023
A problem with conspiracy theories—aside from the fact that they always get around to involving “ the Jews”—is that they distract us from what’s happening in plain sight.
So, in case you missed it, here’s the biggest thing that happened in the world last week: While our planet was experiencing its hottest month of all time, the Earth’s biggest pile of cash (the asset manager BlackRock, with $8.59 trillion dollars under management) named to its board of directors the CEO of the world’s largest oil company, Saudi Aramco, which has produced more carbon emissions than any firm on earth.
This decision was barely even noted— The New York Times produced a nine-paragraph account in its Dealbook newsletter. And yet think of what it means. It is the ultimate signal that the world’s financial community has decided to essentially give up on even the modest commitments they made a couple of years ago in Glasgow, where they said they would work to decarbonize their portfolios.
It’s gross when the PGA does business with the murderous Saudi regime; it’s life-or-death for everyone when the biggest business in the world sucks up to the biggest oil company.
Two things have happened since they made those big pledges (BlackRock’s Larry Fink said at the time, “We are on the edge of a fundamental reshaping of finance” to deal with the climate crisis). First, the war in Ukraine produced huge profits for the oil industry, as their old pal Vladimir Putin (who once hung a medal around the neck of Exxon’s CEO) pushed the price of petroleum into the stratosphere. And second, the oil industry’s bought-and-paid-for politicians in red-state America wrote nasty letters about “ESG investing” and threatened to break ties with the Wall Street firms that were “going woke.” Those two developments were more than enough to persuade barons like Fink to walk back their professed concern with a planet on fire. He is clearly a go-along get-along guy, and where we’re going is—well, if not hell then someplace with a similar temperature. (So far seven people have died and 85 have been hospitalized in Phoenix simply from burns from touching the pavement). It’s gross when the PGA does business with the murderous Saudi regime; it’s life-or-death for everyone when the biggest business in the world sucks up to the biggest oil company.
So what does stand-up leadership look like? Here’s Brad Lander, the comptroller of New York City. It’s not a sexy job (not like, say, running for president as your first public office). He’s the money guy, balancing the city’s books. But New York City has a lot of money, and that money gives you the power to do useful things that help people. When it got unbearably hot, Lander put out a video pointing out that the big banks the city does business with were still bankrolling the fossil fuel industry. It is straightforward, powerful, plainspoken:
And a few days later, when the Saudi Aramco news came out, Lander was again just about the only public servant I saw react:
“BlackRock has clearly stated that climate risk is an investment risk, but actions speak louder than words,” New York City Comptroller Brad Lander said in an emailed statement. “At a time when financial institutions need to take a collective approach to addressing the financial risks from climate change, BlackRock shareholders expect climate-competent, not climate-conflicted, directors.”
This matters. BlackRock is the largest external money manager for the city of New York. Lander can move that business and it will hurt BlackRock; and his words will at least be heard in the din of Wall Street. Others are starting to figure out just how irredeemable the fossil fuel industry is. Here, for instance, is an editorial in the Los Angeles Times last week that I think is the most forthright declaration ever on Big Oil by a major American newspaper. Forget pretending that the Exxons and Aramcos will ever change their stripes: instead, “kick them to the curb.” I’m going to quote from it at length because the paper’s editorial board was not engaging in the usual tentative to-ing and fro-ing. They just said it:
It should be obvious by now that fossil fuel companies have no real plans to change in response to the climate crisis. And that the only way forward is without them.
Some high-profile environmental leaders have come to a similar conclusion recently, among them influential climate negotiator Christiana Figueres, under whose tenure as executive secretary of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change the landmark 2015 Paris agreement was developed. She wrote in Al Jazeera earlier this month that after years of holding out hope that oil and gas companies would wake up and participate in the decarbonization of the economy, their actions over the last 12 months have changed her mind.
Former Vice President Al Gore, a longtime champion for climate action, has also been speaking with refreshing frankness about fossil fuel industry obstruction, decrying “anti-climate plotting” by companies that refuse to disclose their emissions or commit to phasing them out while they successfully push government policies to slow down the transition to clean energy.
It’s a little late for powerful voices from older generations to come to the realization that fossil fuel companies aren’t operating in good faith and will fight climate action until the bitter end. But it’s welcome nonetheless, and there’s clear generational shift in that direction that offers some hope. Polling last year by the Pew Research Center found that while most Americans are reluctant to ditch fossil fuels, younger adults are much more supportive of phasing out oil, gas, and coal entirely.
This is the spirit that we desperately need—the spirit that focuses on the actual, the concrete, the things before our eyes. Like the unbearable heat. Not long before his assassination, Robert F. Kennedy gave a speech at the University of Kansas where he spoke about the real with as much eloquence as any American ever mustered. There was a man who could have been forgiven a conspiracy theory or two—after all, his brother had been killed just five years before. But here’s where he was focused:
Our Gross National Product, now, is over $800 billion dollars a year, but that Gross National Product—if we judge the United States of America by that—that Gross National Product counts air pollution and cigarette advertising, and ambulances to clear our highways of carnage. It counts special locks for our doors and the jails for the people who break them. It counts the destruction of the redwood and the loss of our natural wonder in chaotic sprawl. It counts napalm and counts nuclear warheads and armored cars for the police to fight the riots in our cities. It counts Whitman's rifle and Speck's knife, and the television programs which glorify violence in order to sell toys to our children. Yet the gross national product does not allow for the health of our children, the quality of their education, or the joy of their play. It does not include the beauty of our poetry or the strength of our marriages, the intelligence of our public debate or the integrity of our public officials. It measures neither our wit nor our courage, neither our wisdom nor our learning, neither our compassion nor our devotion to our country, it measures everything in short, except that which makes life worthwhile. And it can tell us everything about America except why we are proud that we are Americans.
Brad Lander, born the next year, is heir to that tradition, and so are the editorialists of the Los Angeles Times, and so are all the other Americans who keep their eye on the moment.
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