> The decision to prioritise renewable and efficient energy follows a policy promise by the incoming European commission president, Ursula von der Leyen, to turn the EIB into a “climate bank”, unlocking a potential €1tn in funds to help move Europe’s economy toward cleaner energy.
PayPal is a private company providing (in the EU at least) retail banking services to businesses and individuals.
It is good when good things happen and bad when bad things happen, yes.
We don't need to lock ourselves into some kind of universal ethical conclusion here.
Cool, so I guess we just downvote stuff we disagree with.
Do we support investing in blood diamonds, no matter how profitable?
Till there's a global solution to the energy problem we'll need oil. Existing solutions are nowhere close to being sufficient, therefore divestment will have no impact on the amount of oil burned. It's ridiculous to think that clicking a sell button on some assets will fix global warming, that's not how the world works.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_energy_consumption
As Bill Gates says, we need to fight two fronts of misinformation: a) that global warming is not a problem, and b) that it is an easy problem.
A nuance is that you don't want to buy into these stocks while people are moving away from vice stocks.
However, once the trend is stabilised and there are no more marginal investors to adopt a vice-free portfolio, then you should buy all the vice stocks as they will have a more favourable discount rate.
It's ridiculous to think that reduced demand for some stock will not reduce its price.
More concretely, the more banks and people make gestures like this, the easier it is for politicians to reduce subsidies / increase taxes for fossil fuels, which will definitely reduce the amount of oil burned.
Is it possible for an industry to increase suffering in a free market? Blood diamonds involve slavery and coercion so that is not really the same. If free people are making free choices to engage in a transaction, it would make sense that they would both only choose things that decrease their own suffering.
Consider grocery stores in a typical moderate-sized city and suburbs, where there are 3-4 major chains. You might assume this is a pretty competitive situation, and they should have prices that are pretty close to each other. But the equilibrium seems to be that each one has a different (and frequently changing) set of products that are noticeably cheaper than the others, and a complementary set that are significantly more expensive. A logical explanation of that would be that as long as they guard their prices closely so you can't compare them easily online or whatever, once you go to the store, you are not completely free. If you are buying one thing because it's a good deal, it's easier to buy other things there as well.
The above is something I've noticed first hand, but it's also something I read about years ago from some economist' research paper.
Everything in business is about figuring out how to deny customers freedom at some level. Arguing that the lack of freedom is trivial in a particular example is missing the point that it's a continuous spectrum from trivial inconvenience that makes you spend a dollar more, to brutal slavery, depending on where business activity is bounded by ethics, mores, regulation, etc.
What I'm trying to say is that the term "free market" is always burdened with all sorts of unstated assumptions, so you can't communicate very well by assuming people interpret it the same way.
From the first paragraph on Wikipedia: “As a ‘policy-driven bank’ whose shareholders are the member states of the EU, the EIB uses its financing operations to bring about European integration and social cohesion. It should not be confused with the European Central Bank.”
About their mission: “ As the ‘Bank of the European Union’. the EIB's mission is to make a difference to the future of Europe and its partners by supporting sound investments which further EU policy goals.”
So this is exactly the kind of thing they do.
Just like with IMF which is supposed to keep the world's monetary system stable (more like central banks/monetary side of things), and the World Bank which is supposed to induce progress (more like governments/fiscal side of things).
I apologize for poor formatting on my phone.
