The moral argument alone was not sufficient to carry the decision
Winter, Zebegeny, Amrita Sher-Gil, 1939
I’ve been working on this lengthy article for the past few months off and on and pretty intensely during the past month and it is finally published, partially at least. It got so long that we decided to split it up into a series of two articles and the first installment is out now. It’s about the fossil fuel divestment movement, and specifically why foundations that are substantially funding climate action are still invested in the oil and gas industry, even as so many other institutional investors are walking away. That, it turns out, is a very good question!
All in all, I think it’s the biggest reported work I’ve written, both in terms of length and amount of reporting. I talked with maybe a dozen people, most multiple times each, read probably as many reports and research articles on the topic, and wrote I think five drafts (my editor is very patient, for which I am grateful). I will talk a little about why it was such a slog but here is a piece of it:
Major Climate Funders Are Still Invested in Fossil Fuels. Why Is That?
When the Rockefeller Brothers Fund, a family foundation derived from one of history’s biggest oil fortunes, announced it would ditch its fossil fuel investments, it became a beacon for the growing divestment movement—a symbol of the way the economy is shifting. As dramatic as the decision was, it took a lot of time and convincing to get there.
“The case I first went in with was essentially saying, it’s morally contradictory to be a leader in philanthropic efforts to combat climate change and to be continuing to invest in the fossil fuels that are causing it,” foundation President and CEO Stephen Heintz says. “The simple analogy is, you’re making grants to beat lung cancer on the one hand, and you’re still invested in tobacco stocks.”
Heintz says while that was compelling to the foundation’s board, “the moral argument alone was not sufficient to carry the decision.” It wasn’t until a grantee of RBF’s, Carbon Tracker, made a financial case—the “stranded assets” argument that the vast majority of known fossil fuel reserves cannot be burned—that they reached a consensus to walk away from the industry. Five years later, Heintz says the board and staff agree that in all of their work on climate change, which first started in the 1990s, “this was the most impactful and most important decision we made.”
In those five years, the larger divestment movement has also ballooned across universities, faith-based institutions, governments, and more—now totaling $12 trillion in committed assets. And yet, while nearly 200 foundations worldwide have committed to divest, many thousands have not, and the largest American foundations with explicit missions to combat climate change have opted not to divest. In fact, divestment leaders say that since the push to get foundations to divest began around five years ago, they’ve backed away from philanthropies and focused on other, more promising targets such as insurance companies and pension funds.
“Look, we’ve done a lot of work targeting some of the most iconic foundations, and we have basically been beating our heads against a wall,” says Clara Vondrich, director of Divest Invest.
Which raises the question—why are so many foundations, including prominent leaders in climate and energy issues, so unwilling to publicly walk away from the fossil fuel industry?
To answer that question and gain a better understanding of this charged and complex issue, I spoke at length with foundation leaders, impact investment experts and activists. Ultimately, I’ve found that whether foundations divest boils down to legitimate challenges they face, but is largely about the level to which they are willing to break away from a certain entrenched status quo—and one that is built on increasingly shaky ground. On the flip side, leadership must be sufficiently moved by a bundle of strategic and moral arguments for divestment, such that breaking from that status quo is deemed worthwhile.
Throw all these factors into a boardroom, and what comes out is a divestment announcement. Or, as is more often the case, not.
Read the whole thing here it should be paywall-free for a little while and the second installment which is more about the political and moral importance should be out after the holidays.
Divestment is something that I have had a pretty solid opinion on for some time, since I first covered the Harvard divest campaign back when I wrote for this scrappy Boston indie media outlet that god I just loved writing for but paid very little (it has since morphed into the current iteration of Dig Boston). I’ve been wanting to write something about divestment and foundations because they have been laggards in the movement and it just made no sense to me, so I talked to a few people and wrote up a draft but I just felt like I didn’t fully understand the issue and couldn’t make a very confident assessment of it. So I put the draft on a shelf and did a ton more reporting. The challenging thing about it is that I had to learn a bunch about institutional investing, which I knew almost nothing about, and it’s also a very heated debate so it was hard to get people to talk on record. Oh I am also a slow writer.
Not surprisingly, given my own outlook on the crimes of the fossil fuel industry and my assessment of philanthropy (that it has an important purpose but usually just props up existing power structures), my mind has not changed. But I do understand the holdouts and the complexities of the issue far better than I did before. I hope that as a result people who read both installments can see not only where I’m coming from, but also the underlying values and conflicts and systemic problems that are at the root of the disagreement.
Anyway happy it’s done I think it turned out OK. When you work a long time on something like this it is always kind of sad because it’s like well there it is some bits and bytes that people may or may not look at and if they read both articles they will be done in like a half hour and then they will read approx 100 other articles about baby yoda that day boo hoo my life is so hard.
Links
- The Senate has become increasingly skewed toward the interests of the GOP and white Americans and there is really no clear way to change it love too do democracy.
- The Mormon Church has been hoarding its charitable donations to the tune of $100 billion, a whistleblower says, to be used in the event of the second coming of Christ so that is going to buy the new Jesus a lot of nice sandals.
- Remember that cave in Indonesia where people were drawing the turkey hands 40,000 years ago? Well now archaeologists have found drawings of mythical human-animal hybrids in the same spot, which they think is the earliest imaginative art. Honestly I don’t think they are very good but you have to start somewhere.
- I like this meditation on how to emotionally surrender to a long, cold, dark winter by Jason Kottke.
- Another good article on the 1969 occupation of Alcatraz this one has some amazing old photos.
- I am obsessed with little subcultures including the one around Sonic the Hedgehog so I enjoyed this review of a live performance of music from the Sonic video games, even though it is white on black text so enjoy your temporary blindness!
Listening
I guess Tinariwen this group of musicians from northern Mali have been around for a long time but they are new to me. I cannot get over the way the guitar sounds in this song and all of their songs for that matter. Enjoy this video of them shredding in the middle of the Sahara desert.
Watching
I finished the final season of Silicon Valley which made me happy and then sad, sort of like Jared when he met his biological parents. I think Jared is my favorite character but Richard’s attorney is underrated.
I also watched the finale of Watchmen which if you haven’t you gotta it is a real masterpiece. This is a great interview with Emily Nussbaum and Damon Lindelof in which he talks about how part of his goal was to make amends for the many failings of Lost.
There you go shorter one this week. I feel like I had a lot more to tell you but you know it’s that time of year a lot going on. I think I have one more newsletter in me in the 2010s and then I will be on winter hiatus while I’m out of the country getting into misadventures and looking at various temples etc.
Whatever you celebrate I hope you have a really nice one and spend time with loved ones if you enjoy their company and if you don’t enjoy their company maybe just spend a tiny bit of time with them and then go see Star Wars and find out whose has a secret grandpa or whatever or maybe take drugs and go see Cats I heard one of the cat people spins around so fast he explodes into dust. Which is to say, Happy Holidays from Crisis Palace.
Tate
PS. The only present I want from you this year is for you to smash that little heart button right there and then in the spirit of the season share Crisis Palace with someone who might like it.