Goldman Sachs To Support Environmental Sustainability

David Solomon, chief executive of Goldman Sachs, recently wrote an editorial in the Financial Times in which he laid out the premise behind a $750 billion plan for a decade of investing, financing, and advisory activity that will exclusively cover nine climate-critical areas such as renewable energy, sustainable agriculture, and carbon reductions.

With this move, Goldman Sachs becomes the first major U.S. bank to prohibit financing for Arctic oil drilling and the first to establish explicit limits on financing for the oil and gas sector.

“Companies have traditionally treated sustainability as a peripheral issue,” writes Solomon in the FT, “focusing narrowly on the way they manage their impact on the environment. We don’t have the luxury of that limited perspective any more.”

Wow. Coming on the heels of BlackRock’s similar announcement last week, we have further confirmation that Big Money has a conscience.

Looking at this from a macro level, we see a civilization on a planet that is simultaneously tearing itself to shreds with fossil fuel consumption and land mismanagement, countered by enormous efforts from some huge entities:

• The public sector (largely in the EU)

• The largest private capital firms

• A few of the top publicly traded entities in energy and transportation

• More than 200,000 groups whose missions embrace environmental and social justice

Just when certain of us were starting to hang our heads, we now say, “Game on!”