More investors will spurn fossil fuels

July 30, 2017, by Paul Brown

http://climatenewsnetwork.net/more-investors-will-spurn-fossil-fuels/

Oil and gas shares offer diminishing returns, and more investors will spurn fossil fuels, though finding a new home for their money is not easy.

LONDON, 30 July, 2017 – Shares in major oil and gas companies are expected to plunge in value in the next three to five years because of climate change-related financial risks, meaning more investors will spurn fossil fuels. This is the verdict of British asset managers who control billions of pounds of investments in stock markets.

It could have serious consequences for many thousands of people whose pension funds have invested in these companies, as well as many institutions and charities which rely on dividends for their income, according to a report by the Climate Change Collaboration (CCC), a group of four UK charitable trusts. 

They compiled the report from a survey of thirteen of the world’s largest asset managers, who were asked what effect climate change would have on fossil fuel stocks and what alternative investments were available for customers who wanted to avoid them.

The Collaboration is running a campaign to try to get individuals and large institutions like universities and local authorities to divest from the fossil fuel industry because of the damage oil majors are doing to the climate.

Gauging effect

It carried out the survey to see what effect the campaign is having on the people managing the largest amounts of money invested in the sector.

In order to gauge whether investors had got the message, fund managers were asked  whether their clients had asked about fossil fuel-free investments. Every manager replied that many of their clients had mentioned the issue, and many were concerned about it.

Among the risks identified as likely to depress fossil fuel shares were:

government regulation which affected businesses;

the risk of litigation from environment groups;

the stigma of being associated with fossil fuels; and

the fear of stranded assets, oil and gas that has to be left in the ground to avoid worsening climate change.

Of these risks, government regulation was seen as the greatest, with 77% of fund managers saying it would hit the price of shares within five years.

The Collaboration is closely involved in DivestInvest, a campaign to get investors to exclude fossil fuels from their share portfolios and instead invest in renewables, energy and water efficiency. So far 700 organisations with $5.5 trillion invested have joined the movement, and have already either moved their money or adopted a policy to do so.

One of the problems they face, however, is that there are not enough share portfolios being offered that are fossil fuel-free. The investment managers surveyed said that as a result they were under pressure from clients to include a fossil-free option among their funds, and some were preparing to offer more of these.

The report concludes: “The revelatory finding of this survey is that most of the asset managers consider that climate change-related financial risks will significantly impact the valuations of oil and gas majors in a very short timeframe.

“This is an immediate and a significant risk for investors invested in passive funds –  including pension savers and many charities, including universities.

“There is an urgent need for new passive investment products that manage the climate change-related financial risks associated with fossil fuels and provide income and capital growth for investors as we transition to a zero-carbon economy.”

– Climate News Network

Kochs and Trump Team Up to Cut Billionaires’ Taxes

by Richard Eskow

https://www.commondreams.org/views/2017/08/01/kochs-and-trump-team-cut-billionaires-taxes

This headline appeared on Monday, July 31, 2017, at precisely 4:00 am: “Koch Brothers Move to Back White House’s Tax-Cut Plan.” This one appeared less than twelve hours later: “White House sees tax reform zipping through Congress in October, November.”

That’s what you get when you combine the Kochs’ money and influence with Trump’s executive power and support from the Republican base: a unified Republican Party marching in lockstep toward a destructive goal.

The Kochs’ much-publicized hostility toward Donald Trump has been replaced by a strategic alliance between the ideologically extreme billionaire brothers and the ideologically fluid but equally self-serving businessman/president. They have reached “new-found unity” around an issue that is guaranteed to excite all Republican politicians; tax cuts that would benefit Trump, most members of his cabinet – and, of course, the Koch brothers themselves.

They don’t call them “cuts,” of course. That would sound crass. Instead, in time-worn Republican fashion, they hide their selfishness behind a more refined word: “reform.”

“Social Security reform,” “Medicare reform,” “tax reform” – when Republicans say they want to “reform” something, the only thing you can be sure of is that the wealthy will benefit and everyone else will suffer.

Longtime Koch operative Marc Short was given a key role in the Trump White House. As Legislative Director, Short works with Republicans in Congress to promote the passage of Trump’s agenda – or, in this case, the Trump/Koch agenda.

When it comes to taxation, the Kochs seem to be the senior partner in this relationship. Steve Bannon’s proposal for a millionaire tax increase was quickly shot down. So was House Speaker Paul Ryan’s proposal for a “border adjustment tax,” which the billionaires brothers strongly opposed.

What remained was a “reform” plan any self-serving billionaire could love. Virtually all of the cuts – 99.6 percent of them – would go to the top 1 percent, according to Americans for Tax Fairness, cutting approximately $1.5 trillion from Medicaid while giving roughly $2 trillion in tax cuts to corporations. The House’s “reform” plan would also cut nearly $500 billion from Medicare.

These cuts will make you sick – perhaps literally. They would hurt millions of older Americans, including the two-thirds of nursing home patients who rely on Medicaid for their care. Their tax cuts would also be bad for the country’s economic health. As the experience of recent years has confirmed, government spending cuts also slow economic growth and increase the risk of recession.

Ready to Launch

Two Koch-backed groups, Freedom Partners and Americans for Prosperity, sponsored an event on Monday to advance the Koch/Trump/GOP tax cuts. Joining Short on the speaker’s list was Trumps Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin, the ruthless and unethical “foreclosure king” and former Goldman Sachs partner. Mnuchin, although not quite a billionaire himself, is very wealthy and would benefit greatly from these tax cuts too.

Mnuchin peddled the usual GOP snake-oil at the conference. “This is about creating jobs,” Mnuchin said, “this is about creating wage growth, this is about a simpler and fairer tax system.” That’s what they said after they passed the last round of millionaire and billionaire tax cuts under George W. Bush. Wages stayed stagnant under Bush, and job creation slowed dramatically even before the financial crisis of 2007-2008.

The Kochs’ “multi-million dollar campaign” to promote tax cuts is just getting started. They are running digital ads and will hold another tax cut event on Wednesday, August 2, featuring far-right “Freedom Caucus” Rep. Mark Meadows (R-NC). Can they really get their agenda passed by November? “So that, I think, is an aggressive schedule, but that is our timetable,” Short told attendees at Monday’s event, adding: “I think we’re in for a long fall, legislative calendar-wise.”

Americans may be in for a long fall “health-wise” and “economy-wise,” too.

Trump Considers Expanding Afghan War to Exploit Minerals

Trump is reportedly being encouraged by corporate executives to take advantage of Afghanistan's mineral wealth

by Jake Johnson, staff writer

https://www.commondreams.org/news/2017/07/26/colonialism-and-greed-trump-considers-afghan-war-expansion-exploit-minerals

As the 16th anniversary of the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan approaches, President Donald Trump is reportedly being pressured by a billionaire financier and a chemical executive to extend the scope of the conflict for one simple, greedy reason: to exploit Afghanistan's mineral reserves.

According to James Risen and Mark Landler of the New York Times, the Trump administration is "considering sending an envoy to Afghanistan to meet with mining officials" as the president is receiving encouragement from Stephen Feinberg, the billionaire head of DynCorp, and Michael Silver, the head of American Elements, a firm that specializes in "extracting rare-earth minerals."

"In 2010, American officials estimated that Afghanistan had untapped mineral deposits worth nearly $1 trillion," Risen and Landler note. This large figure reportedly "caught the attention of" the president, who has in the past argued that the biggest failure of the U.S. in Iraq was not"taking" the country's oil.

Trump is hardly the first president to notice and eagerly examine Afghanistan's mineral reserves.

"In 2006, the George W. Bush administration conducted aerial surveys of the country to map its mineral resources," Risen and Landler note. "Under President Barack Obama, the Pentagon set up a task force to try to build a mining industry in Afghanistan—a challenge that was stymied by rampant corruption, as well as security problems and the lack of roads, bridges or railroads."

Nonetheless, Trump appears to be committed to the belief that mineral extraction "could be one justification for the United States to stay engaged in the country," despite warnings from security analysts that such a strategy could risk further deadly confrontations with the Taliban.

If Trump moves forward with a mineral extraction plan, Eric Levitz of New York Magazine adds, there is a serious "danger of feeding the Taliban top-notch propaganda. It's hard to win hearts and minds, when you're also trying to win minerals and mines."

But as Gizmodo's Adam Clark Estes observes, such concerns are unlikely to move Trump, whose "greed has led the man to leave a path of destruction behind him on his pursuit of profit and glory."

"That sort of habit makes some people rich in the business world, at the expense of making others poor," Estes writes. "When you're talking about global politics and terrorism, however, people die, and nations fail."

As Common Dreams reported earlier this month, the Trump White House has been consulting with high-profile war profiteers who have argued that the way forward in Afghanistan is to further privatize military operations in the country. White House Chief Strategist Steve Bannon and senior advisor Jared Kushner reportedly "recruited" both Feinberg and Blackwater founder Erik Prince to lay out a war plan for the president.

Critics denounced this development as a step toward "colonialism," and commentators had similar words for Trump's apparent attraction to Afghanistan's mineral wealth.

Law professor and former White House lawyer Andy Wright concluded that the Times report lays bare Trump's "British Empire thinking," which places plunder over "threat-based security."

Al Gore Answers the Web's Most Searched Questions on Climate Change

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TOl9WbpcBVM