Post by account_disabled on Mar 5, 2024 22:20:19 GMT -5
John D. Rockefeller, founder of Standard Oil and America's first billionaire, respected science. When his ambitions shifted from crushing his competitors to philanthropy, in 1901 he founded America's first medical research center.
According to Corporate Knights , at a time when doctors were primarily what are known in the United States as "pill-pushers" (they provided palliatives, rather than seeking a true cure), the Rockefeller Institute (now Rockefeller University) encouraged scientists to investigate the causes of disease, producing many of the first vaccines and inventing the modern science of cell biology.
With oil companies and conservatives balking at climate change, Rockefeller descendants have banded together to push science forward once again.
Go the Rockefellers vs fossil fuels
In an op-ed published in the Ecuador Mobile Number List fall in The New York Times, Daniel Growald, Peter Gill Case, and Valerie Rockefeller—three of John D.'s great-great-grandchildren—press for banks to stop lending to the fossil fuel sector. c
Calling climate warming a “major risk” to the U.S. economy, they urged financial leaders to “embrace innovation and move beyond the benefits of fossil fuels to develop banking models that excel in a zero-carbon world.”
The Rockefellers go against fossil fuels: they urge banks to stop lending
A world with a climate change
The cousins pointed to Rainforest Action Network's Banking on Climate Change report that found that since 2016, 35 global banks have funneled $2.7 trillion into fossil fuel projects. That trajectory, the writers say, “will guarantee a world with rampant climate disruption.”
The largest lender on that list, with $269 billion between 2016 and 2019, was JPMorgan Chase.
Also on the list of complicit banks were Canada's big five:
RBC, with 141,000 million dollars.
TD, with 103,000 million dollars.
Scotiabank, with 98,000 million dollars.
BMO, with 82,000 million dollars.
CIBC, with 58,000 million dollars.
The cousins were especially upset because JPMorgan Chase had just made an announcement claiming to align itself with the Paris climate agreement. But America's largest bank offered no details on proposed carbon emissions targets for its loan portfolio, nor any plans to reduce lending to the fossil industry, which the Rockefellers see as the best lever for change.
So the family created a new lobby group, BankFWD. Its objective:
Mobilize influential banking customers to pressure their banks to adopt the Paris Agreement goal of limiting global warming to 1.5°C .
Absent aggressive government action, they say, limiting access to financing is the best way to force resource companies to adopt greener solutions.
Meanwhile, oil, gas and coal are also taking a hit when it comes to investments. In the first 10 months of 2020, the energy sector of the S&P 500 index plummeted 52.5%.
That wasn't just Wall Street's worst performance last year: "It was by far the worst of any sector in history," said Jason Goepfert of Minnesota-based Sundial Capital Research. "It exceeds the relative losses of technology companies after the burst of the Internet bubble and the devastation of financial companies after the 2008 financial crisis."
In November, the energy index regained much of that lost ground by rising 30%, thanks to investors' growing faith in the upcoming COVID-19 vaccines. Still, the energy sector now represents less than 3% of the overall value of the S&P 500, down from 12% a decade ago.