Morgan Stanley Follows Citi, BofA in Quitting Climate Group (opens in new tab)

Yes, and now with a Trump presidency they don't need to pretend they care anymore...

I think “keeping up appearances” is too subjective to be meaningful. It seems like something that someone will always think they aren’t or are, so you have to poll people or whatever to figure it out. So it will lead to me chasing something I can’t know well.

I’d rather avoid these sort of meaningless labels and just focus on doing what I think is important.

Like it I wanted to reduce climate impact and I was a bank, I would set up a page that lists all the ways I impact climate.

Myself I prefer they are honest about it. There's no value in a false sense of security.

No.

We should all stop being naive. A corporation only mandate is profits, always increasing ones. All else is secondary.

It's the role of elected governments to regulate that their incessant chase for profits don't harm society.

If society puts in place a government that doesn't care to regulate corporations in their harmful ways, well, in a sense society has spoken.

Honestly, I don't really know if I should or shouldn't be.

ESG actively allocated investment dollars that were specifically designated for socially and environmentally responsible businesses into oil & gas companies, so in that case keeping up appearances is actively making things worse than doing nothing.

It is concerning, but it’s a symptom of a problem that, if you are concerned, you probably knew about already.

Nope. I find it hopeful. Maybe people in general are sick of the pandering and performative nonsense and are finally realizing "awareness" is a bullshit made up thing for people to feel better while doing absolutely nothing useful. As others have pointed out, this sort of stuff is actively harmful once entities learn to easily game it.

This sort of thing has sucked the air from anyone actually doing useful meaningful things - since anyone paying attention just rolls their eyes when someone talks about being green or whatever. Sure, some companies and orgs actually are legitimately doing useful and interesting stuff - but it takes so much personal research into each one now that anyone blathering about how they are green is met with instant suspicion to anyone remotely paying attention to the space.

The less administrative and marketing driven grift the better, even if it's a tiny little baby step. This sort of thing has done more to harm the environmental movement than helped it from where I'm standing.

Fair enough that Tesla is disqualified for poor governance. Lacking the G is disqualifying, but lacking the E isn't? Tells you all need to know about the programme.

We can't count emissions, at most we can estimate them and hope that we would be only one order of magnitude off and not worse. Numbers like that are politically motivated.

On the other hand we can directly measure actual gas in the atmosphere. Every one of us can replicate these measurements with 100$ analyzer. These numbers show that the planet as a whole is doing jack shit regarding reducing climate change:

https://keelingcurve.ucsd.edu/

I don't see any evidence there that the government did this. Isn't it more likely this is a result of the US shipping all its manufacturing overseas?

I have no idea what that includes? For example presumably Chinese goods that Americans buy are excluded? What about shipping? Etc.

This is missing much, including that we've outsourced our manufacturing (and thus CO2 from manufacturing) but we still buy lots of stuff that requires intense manufacturing.

It's a tragedy of the commons situation.

Anyone who takes on additional costs will be punished for it, because the hive mind of society always (read: _always_) (let me reiterate: always) favors lowest cost, all else being equal.

If your SaaS costs $12/mo because you voluntarily pay for offsetting all emissions that result, you are going to be hard pressed to beat the guy who doesn't give a fuck about emissions and offers an equal product for $10/mo.

The only way is to regulate these things to force compliance between all competitors. Emissions have a real cost, but it is far enough in the future to hide it. The government needs to force that cost into the present.

There are many people who simply don't give a da_n about any one, even their own kids. I know that sounds crazy to the vast majority of us (and it is crazy, for sure), but we are not the super-rich, and they are not like us, my friend. In the very rare situations where they are like us, you get Bezos' ex-wife, a true rarity who turns her wealth into others' happiness.

It is very difficult for an average person to understand how callous and/or cruel a person can be when they are seeking more pleasure out of this world's resources. A person must begin the positive long tail of spiritual development to grok the negative long tail. The >80% of folks in neither long tail just have no clue, my friend.

Rich people don't worry about this. They can always buy whatever they need to survive. And workers in a company have to do whatever they're told to, just to maintain their job. So don't expect them to do anything, specially if rich people need to make less money in the process.

> It's like saying "meh, our kids aren't worth the effort".

That is only true if you think this is a worthwhile effort. I have no idea what the Net Zero Banking Alliance achieves, but its perfectly possible its not achieving anything worthwhile.

if you regard climate change as an emergency, then a target of achieving net zero in 2050 is probably pretty useless.

> It's like saying "meh, our kids aren't worth the effort".

I don't think it's like saying that. In most cases the point is there is no amount of effort that an individual (or even a small group) can make that would solve the problem. I'm not saying I agree with that reasoning, but it is very different to saying our kids aren't worth the effort. Like if a child was sick, a parent might genuinely believe that they would chop their arm off to save them, but they don't because it won't actually fix anything.

I think very few people (1) believe that climate change is a real and existential threat; and (2) believe that their actions can stop climate change; but (3) decide it's not worth taking those actions.

I know that I am in the minority in these parts.

But I'm glad to see these banks pull out of these net-zero related efforts. For me, and again I know I'm in the minority here, net-zero puts a huge cramp on productivity and building out what we need for civilization. These net-zero aren't progressive - they are regressive.

What we need is build. To drill. To create. For that, we need all the energy sources we can pull from. Fossil. Nuclear. And yes, solar and wind too. Hydro. Net-zero is what will pull down everyone.

But our worldviews are radically different here.

The reason for shareholder value to be the guiding principle for companies is about being clear what an organization is about. There is nothing wrong with a company supporting some nonprofit cause but that should be a distinct legal entity. Productive enterprises should be corporations that endeavor to make money. Social cause organizations should be 501c3 or equivalents and not making products as their primary business. Blurring the lines (C corps getting involved in social activism, nonprofits making lots of money and paying most of it for administrative purposes) causes no end of problems.

There is no legal requirement for a company to prioritize or only consider shareholder value when making decisions, and never has been. This idea is a meme but it's a straw man. The law doesn't say that. In fact CEOs have enormous leeway to do whatever they like, even if it's not good for shareholder profits. The accountability mechanism isn't a legal requirement to make shareholders money but the ability of shareholders to appoint a board who will then fire the CEO if they're not doing a good job. But those shareholders can choose the board and the board choose the CEO using whatever criteria they like, including making less profit to prioritize other things.

There is a generalized "duty of care" requirement in most jurisdictions, but it can be and often is interpreted much more widely than a requirement to maximize shareholder returns.

No, you just need to set the right incentives. Make harmful behaviour expensive, and the companies will adjust.

I'd be satisfied with just the first half of this sentence. What they think about the shareholders is entirely irrelevant. Let them do their thing while the company does their own. Distinct entities.