[Sourcecode]

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-29310475

Quote:

The Rockefeller Brothers Fund is joining a coalition of philanthropists pledging to rid themselves of more than $50 bn (£31 bn) in fossil fuel assets.

Quote:

"We are quite convinced that if he were alive today, as an astute businessman looking out to the future, he would be moving out of fossil fuels and investing in clean, renewable energy," Mr Heintz said in a statement.

Pack up them oil wells... time to start making batteries

[Emancipator]

Its just their nearly 1 Billion Philanthropic fund, keep in mind they also have another one with a 3 billion endowment.

The collective families' net worth is still $50+Billion, and you can bet a large chunk of that is held in XOP

[bojangles]

Really? I thought they weren't influential at all these days.

[Dr. Howard]

Its called hedging on legislation. When it looked like federal and state climate/carbon laws were going to pass there was a bunch of investment pouring in to companies based on guaranteed markets and prices that would result. When the laws didn't pass the investments went away.

[The Beast1]

If they were smart, they'd put that investment money into natural gas powered cars and nuclear breeder reactors.

[Jukes]

Would this leave other people to get wealthy by taking over unclean energy to continue supplying other countries who won' t have access to the rise of clean energy?

[Darius]

Assuming they don't use their money and connections to bring legislation/regulations to prevent/make it more expensive to produce unclean energy. For instance some rich Americans(Rockefeller, Buffet) have been funding Environmental NGO's to block oil/gas pipelines in Canada. I'm sure this is common, it just doesn't get much press.

[Bad Hussar]

HaHa. Yes, of course they will only do this if they are confident they have legislators in their pocket, and the laws to be passed will offer their particular investments unfair advantage not only over "unclean" energy sources, but also over others players in the "clean" energy field.

On a different tack:
Are there any members who can comment intelligently on whether clean energy really is clean. My impression has always been that if you do a genuinely full analysis of all/most of the environmental factors involved a lot of clean energy, especially in the consumer market, actually ends up being more detrimental to the environment. e.g. Battery powered cars need to be charged, and the electricity obviously needs to be generated somehow, and also battery disposal is a huge environmental negative as well. I'm more positive about commercial and municipal projects than consumer ones. i.e. Buses and delivery vehicles may well have a net positive effect since they are used so much more, while cars probably won't be used enough to counteract the negatives.

Not that I don't support clean energy initiatives. If they really do work and provide more efficient energy that is terrific. It's just that I'm very cynical and feel that the "winners" will be politically connected companies which only appear to have a net positive environmental impact, and this due to Public Relations efforts rather than science/reality. In many cases I suspect the products they intoduce will be worse for the environment and are designed purely to enrich their owners and their political backers.

[Vice]

This is just one of their smaller foundations.

Their real one is the Rockefeller Foundation which was founded by John D.

This is just a PR exercise, nothing to see here...

[Dr. Howard]

(09-23-2014 08:36 AM)frenchie Wrote:  

If they were smart, they'd put that investment money into natural gas powered cars and nuclear breeder reactors.

"nuclear breeder reactors" are real? I would have guessed it was slang for a welfare mom. "Use a condom, she's a nuclear breeder reactor that just wants to have kids and live on welfare"

[heavy]

If I were them I'd invest in something you could sell congress on and lobby the shit outta Washington too.

[ElBorrachoInfamoso]

Headline in 2114: Gates Family Charity to pull all its investments out of tech.

Most of the world's oil production comes from state monopolies anyway so this divestment only makes sense if they were forthright in their reasons for pulling out of oil i.e. they really do believe the market is overvaluing oil stocks.