Guest essay by Eric Worrall

Big fund managers like Blackrock and BNP Paribas are supporting shareholder climate resolutions, demanding big companies demonstrate their commitment to Paris Climate Agreement goals. But President Trump is supporting a pushback against corporate virtue signalling.

Climate change: asset managers join forces with the eco-warriors

The pandemic has persuaded some investors of the potential financial damage from global warming

Attracta Mooney in London and Patrick Temple-West in Tampa

As 2020 kicked off, Dan Gocher at the Australasian Centre for Corporate Responsibility, a shareholder advocacy organisation, was feeling “pretty optimistic” about its plans to force big Australian energy companies to tackle climate change.

…

Then came the coronavirus pandemic. “Once the virus hit, we said ‘God, we won’t get anything done [on climate change] for 18 months’,” says Mr Gocher.

Like many others, Mr Gocher feared investors would swiftly retreat from recently made climate pledges as markets plummeted. Critics had long argued that the fund industry’s nascent love affair with environmental, social and governance investing was in reality a marketing ploy that would be dumped at the first sign of trouble. 

Instead, in spite of the pandemic, 2020 has proved to be a landmark year for investor action on climate change, with significant resolutions being passed and investment pouring into sustainable funds. With both regulators and clients increasingly calling for change, asset managers are now broadening their remit beyond energy-intensive industries such as oil.

…

The path to greener investment is not assured, with other companies still shrugging off asset managers’ new threat. “Our companies are not worried,” says Charles Crain at the National Association of Manufacturers, whose members include ExxonMobil.

In the US there is a growing pushback against investors acting as climate warriors. Asset managers are gearing up for a row with the Trump administration over a new proposal that threatens investors’ ability to incorporate ESG principles into pension portfolios. At the same time, many well-known asset managers are still reluctant to vote against management, meaning the vast majority of climate resolutions do not pass.

…

Read more: https://www.ft.com/content/78167e0b-fdc5-461b-9d95-d8e068971364

The US SEC has been very active blocking climate activist shareholder resolutions.

Investors Worried About Climate Change Run Into New SEC Roadblocks 

The Securities & Exchange Commission has more Trump appointees now, and energy and utility companies see an ally as they argue shareholder resolutions ‘micromanage’. 

BY DAVID HASEMYER
MAY 3, 2019

Nearly two-thirds of the climate-related shareholder resolutions filed with publicly held energy and utility companies this year have been contested before the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, an agency now dominated by appointees of President Donald Trump who appear more sympathetic to the fossil fuel industry.

So far this year, the SEC has sustained 45 percent of the challenges, the highest percentage in the last five years.

Exxon, Chevron and Devon Energy have all succeeded with arguments that some shareholder proposals infringe on the companies’ oversight of everyday business operations. The SEC concluded that forcing the companies to comply with the demands would be micromanaging.

…

Read more: https://insideclimatenews.org/news/01052019/shareholder-resolution-climate-change-sec-challenge-micromanage-trump

If you are concerned about the infringement of shareholder rights, remember if climate action was really the overriding priority, asset managers and shareholders could install the head of Greenpeace as the new company CEO.

In my opinion the activist asset managers voting these green resolutions want to have their cake and eat it as well. They want to keep the successful management team in place, doing their magic, but they also want to force management’s hand on daily operations.

The SEC rules being used to block these virtue signalling resolutions are not designed to prevent shareholders getting what they want, they are designed to avoid dysfunctional delegation, responsibility without authority. They stop shareholders from placing impossible micromanaging demands on managers, then holding the managers accountable for a situation they are powerless to correct.

Like this:

Like Loading…

Related

via Watts Up With That?

https://ift.tt/2WXIVLv

July 26, 2020 at 08:14PM

Reposted from Polar Bear Science

Posted on July 25, 2020 |

An excellent summary of recent points I’ve made in my latest book and on this blog about the recent push to keep polar bear extinction panic alive with a new model of impending doom was published two days ago in the Spectator UK by columnist Ross Clark (23 July 2020, in Coffee House).

Excerpt below:

“Wouldn’t it be nice if we could debate climate change for five minutes without hearing about polar bears or being subjected to footage of them perched precariously on a melting ice floe? But that is a little too much to expect. Polar bears have become the pin-ups of climate change, the poor creatures who are supposed to jolt us out of thinking about abstract concepts and make us weep that our own selfishness is condemning these magnificent animals to a painful and hungry end.”

Read the whole thing here.

PS. I noticed Clark refers to me as an anthropologist. I have requested a correction because I am a zoologist.

Like this:

Like Loading…

Related

via Watts Up With That?

https://ift.tt/32ZLHnc

July 26, 2020 at 05:03PM

The image above shows melting of Arctic sea ice extent over the last 20 days, July 5 to 25, 2020.  At the bottom right, the shallow Hudson Bay goes to water rapidly, losing 500k km2 of ice.  Even so, at 172k km2 that region is nearly average.  The remarkable 2020 event is the effect of high Siberian temperatures causing extensive melting of the nearby shelf seas, seen on the left vertical. Already on July 5, Laptev was mostly water, and now has only 5% ice. Neighboring seas East Siberian and Kara also melted rapidly. The other feature is Baffin Bay, center right, losing 300k km2 to retain only 7% of its maximum ice extent.

The graph below shows the ice extent retreating during July compared . to some other years and the 13 year average (2007 to 2019 inclusive).

Note that the  MASIE NH ice extent 13 year average loses about 2.6M km2 during July, down to 7M km2. MASIE 2020 started nearly 500k km2 lower and lost ice at a higher rate, now 1.1M km2 below average.  Both MASIE and SII show this year below other recent years, reaching the present ice extent 7 days ahead of 2019 and 14 days ahead of average.

The table shows where the ice is distributed compared to average.  Bering and Okhotsk are open water at this point no longer in these updates. The deficit of 476k km2 represents 5% of the total, or an ice extent melting 5 days ahead of average.

Note that all of the deficit to average is accounted for by the Russian shelf seas of East Siberian, Laptev and Kara, along with Baffin Bay

Illustration by Eleanor Lutz shows Earth’s seasonal climate changes. If played in full screen, the four corners present views from top, bottom and sides. It is a visual representation of scientific datasets measuring Arctic ice extents.

via Science Matters

https://ift.tt/39wgn0G

July 26, 2020 at 02:06PM

Researchers have previously hypothesized that an environmental trigger may have helped set in motion the crop failures, famines and social unrest that plagued the Mediterranean region at the time when the Roman Republic collapsed.

What environmental trigger could have been so powerful? An excellent article by Katherine Kornei in The New York Times (22 Jun 2020) provides the explanation.

Here are excerpts, along with some paraphrasing, from that article:

Chaos and conflict roiled the Mediterranean in the first century B.C. Against a backdrop of famine, disease and the assassinations of Julius Caesar and other political leaders, the Roman Republic collapsed, and the Roman Empire rose in its place.

Scientists on Monday announced evidence that a volcanic eruption in the remote Aleutian Islands contributed to the Roman Republic’s demise. That eruption — and others before it and since — played a role in changing the course of history.

Joseph McConnell, a climate scientist at the the Desert Research Institute in Reno, Nevada, and his collaborators recently analyzed six ice cores drilled in the Arctic. In layers of ice corresponding to the early months of 43 B.C., they spotted large upticks in sulfur and, crucially, bits of material that were probably tephra. The timing caught the scientists’ attention.

This eruption was one of the largest of the last few millenniums, Dr. McConnell and his collaborators concluded, and the sulfate aerosols it created remained in the stratosphere for several years. These tiny particles are particularly good at reflecting sunlight, which means they can temporarily alter Earth’s climate.

There’s good evidence that the Northern Hemisphere was colder than normal around 43 B.C. Trees across Europe grew more slowly that year, and a pine forest in North America experienced an unusually early autumn freeze. Using climate models to simulate the impact of an Okmok eruption, Dr. McConnell and his collaborators estimated that parts of the Mediterranean, roughly 6,000 miles away, would have cooled by as much as 13.3 degrees Fahrenheit.

“It was bloody cold,” Dr. McConnell said.

Rain patterns changed as well — some regions would have been drenched by 400 percent more precipitation than normal, the modeling revealed.

These cold, wet conditions would have almost certainly decimated crops, Dr. McConnell and his colleagues said. Historical records compiled by Roman writers and philosophers note food shortages and famines. In 43 B.C., Mark Antony, the Roman military leader, and his army had to subsist on wild fruit, roots, bark and “animals never tasted before,” the philosopher Plutarch wrote.

“It’s an incredible coincidence that it happened exactly in the waning years of the Roman Republic when things were falling apart,” said Dr. McConnell, who published the team’s results in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Read all of this great article:
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/22/science/rome-caesar-volcano.html?utm_source=pocket-newtab

The post Ancient Rome Was Teetering – Then Okmok Volcano Erupted 6,000 Miles Away appeared first on Ice Age Now.

via Ice Age Now

https://ift.tt/2D6dLKL

July 26, 2020 at 01:46PM