More Good News for Those of Us with Lungs
Earlier today, the mayor of New York City Bill de Blasio made two huge announcements:
The City’s pension funds will divest from the big oil and gas companies, and
The Big Apple is suing the biggest of these corporations for the climate damage it’s caused.
Not bad for a day’s work.
The practical side of divestment is driving up the cost of capital for fossil fuel concerns, with an eye towards disadvantaging them against their competitors in the renewable energy space. As of about a year ago, a total of 688 institutions and over 58,000 individuals representing $5.5 trillion in assets worldwide had been divested from fossil fuels; that’s not exactly pocket change.
In addition to the sheer force of the supply and demand issues here, there is an emotional appeal as well. I can attest to that personally; I felt like a champ when I transferred my (admitted paltry) portfolio into funds that are non-extractive.
As far as the law suits are concerned, it’s impossible to know where all this is taking us. As in all cases like this, you’ll find people who will tell you that such actions are frivolous, but it’s hard to imagine that this is true in this case. If you had a business that you knew was damaging other people’s property, but you conspired to hide that truth, you would rightly expect to “go down hard.” If this analogy fails to hold in the case of fossil fuels, it’s only that the industry is so large and powerful that it cannot be attacked.
In any case, not a bad day in the scheme of things.
Craig,
Your conclusions are both erroneous. The fossil fuel industry has no difficulty raising capital due to being highly profitable while demand for the 350,000 oil industry products increases.
Those profits are not the result of any deceptive trading, but driven by essential consumer demand. The Oil Industry doesn’t really have any ‘competitors’ outside the industry. Divestiture by some lenders or shareholders is quickly replaced by others. Individual companies, especially in the high risk, capital intensive exploration sector may find debt a problem, but the industry as whole is experiencing no problems or the pump price would start to increase (solving the problem).
All legal actions or petitions brought before a court must first establish the court’s ability to provide either, relief or reasonable redress for the plaintiff. That redress or relief must reasonably lie within the power of the respondent to provide.
Courts can’t provide relief or redress for actions in which the plaintiff is a willing participant or beneficiary, especially when a plaintiff possesses the power/authority to provide the relief sought by legislation or regulatory jurisdiction.
Relief in the form of compensation presupposes an alternative was at all material times available, or an alternative existed that was in someway suppressed. (Courts don’t accept unsubstantiated conspiracy theories).
Your own actions as stated in your post serve as the perfect example of the futility of such law suits. On the one hand you proudly boost of divesting any personal investment in the fossil fuel industry, but remain an eager consumer ! ( that’s sort of like a prohibitionist proudly proclaiming his opposition to alcohol by divesting shares in a brewery, while ordering another round of beer at his local bar !).
The City of New York may have an $86 billion dollar budget, but nearly 20% of revenue is from the Federal government. Oil Companies are the largest US taxpayer. The City Of New York itself is a large recipient (or beneficiary) of fossil fuel consumption.
NYC has the legislative and regulatory power to redress or provide relief for any and all complaints it considers harmful to NYC. The concept of asking a court to compensate a plaintiff for their own (on going) negligence, or act as a defacto legislator because the plaintiff is politically unwilling to act, is frivolous and clearly a misuse of the court for political purpose.
The taxpayers of NYC and the rest of America should be outraged at such a gross misuse of public funds. The vast sums of money spent such law suits, which at the best are quixotic and symbolic, illustrate the malaise of US society and the selfish hypocrisy of the leftist elite.
Nearly half the population of NYC live close or below the poverty line, while one child in three lives below the poverty line. Of 1,475 public schools, 10% students lived in homeless shelters during the past five years, while at 145 schools 15 % of students were homeless for the past five years.
The city allotted a miserly $10.3 million last year to school homeless students support programs .
The plight of the elderly in NYC is far more shocking.
Yet NYC is prepared to waste tens if not hundreds of millions in the pursuit of futile lawsuits for unattainable objectives, just to satisfy the ego’s and ambitions of a few politicians, an affluent elite and of course some members of the legal fraternity.
I’m sure the more than 50,000 impoverished, homeless elderly citizens of NYC really appreciate NYC diverting funds from social welfare to enriching already very affluent lawyers. Like wise, no doubt small business owners and their customers really appreciate NYC raising taxes to fight futile law suits, which even if successful would simply increase the price of energy driving them and their customers deeper into poverty and dispair.
It’s exactly this kind of irresponsible, cruel, self indulgent behaviour that created the Trump phenomenon.
Yeah, those affluent elite sure have it in for those oil companies. Fossil fuel generally is fast becoming a bad investment. Try to convince asset holders otherwise.