Some things I read just mystify me.

FinancialNews-US.com reported on June 27 that former US Vice President Dan Quayle had joined the board of Heckmann Corp., which it described as a ‘blank check’ company. It continued:

‘Blank [check] companies, which have no defined business plan and are set up to buy an unspecified company or assets, have become increasingly popular in the last couple of years, but have been controversial because investors do not know what they are buying.’

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I am very pleased to introduce to you KLD Research and Analytics’ new Blog.  We will be posting news, commentary and updates on issues relevant to integrating environmental, social and governance data into investment decision making.

Sincerely,

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Update 1

SEC Chair, Christopher Cox, announced in testimony before the US House Committee on Financial Services that the SEC will issue new proxy rules before the next proxy season:

‘In connection with the Commission’s review of our proxy rules governing shareholder proposals, we have just completed a series of roundtables that considered, among other issues, the future role of technology in facilitating communications not only between shareholders and their company, but also directly among shareholders themselves. As we prepare to put new proxy rules in place in time for the next proxy season to address the implications of the court’s decision in AFSCME v. AIG, the Commission is also considering ways to facilitate greater online interaction among shareholders by removing any obstacles in the current rules, such as the ambiguity concerning whether use of an electronic shareholder forum could constitute a proxy solicitation.’

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I discovered this curve on Xigi.net, a social networking site. It shows where different market sectors or drivers behind sustainable development reside on the continuum of 1) acceptance in the mainstream, 2) visibility to the public eye, and 3) maturity as a social enterprise.

A good friend who used to work in the carbon offsets sector commented to me that this curve should be thought of as a zoomed-in pixel of a larger graph showing major social shifts in the twentieth century (think 1960’s, vietnam, civil rights). The larger wave is building very strongly right now and this wave (from xigi) will break on top of the broader, deeper and stonger wave as we shift toward a more sustainable mode of living.

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An article to share with you on a new socially responsible investing firm founded by Al Gore and the former CEO of Goldman Sachs Asset Management, David Blood.

The article has good insight and perspective on a systems-based approach to environmental, social and governance (ESG) research. Both Blood and Gore emphasize the interrelationships among companies and the broad systems in which they operate.

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If you’re looking for the article to read about the state of affairs in the alternative energy space, covering the present as well as near- and long-term projections, this is it.

The article touches on all the major alternative energy sources- Wind, Geothermal, Biofuels, etc.- and most importantly, it goes into the economics of each source. How cost effective is solar power these days? How many cents per kilowatt hour does it take to produce biomass in a plant? How much does cost matter when it comes to going mainstream? This article is a guide to these kinds of questions.

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Here is a scary example of an ostensibly green initiative - the growing of palm oil for biofuel in Colombia - having very perverse human rights effects.

Indeed, as one observer quoted in the article says, it is “the dark side of biofuel”.

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Whatever the rights and wrongs of mission-related investment, the bad press of the past few weeks may mark a shift for the foundation, into an era when public opinion no longer takes for granted that giving alone is virtuous. -The Economist (2007)

By May the uproar caused by the stories in January about the inconsistencies between the Gates Foundation’s investments and its programs had subsided to a dull roar. The story then exploded again around Warren Buffett’s coming $31 billion contribution to the Foundation and his company’s investments and Darfur.

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Some years ago, I whined to a friend, a management consultant, about some management problems I was having. With a look of pity for the forgetful, he raised his hand and spread his fingers as far as they would go.

“What’s that mean?”

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For a couple of generations, commentators have described SRI as a three-legged stool:

• shareholder advocacy,

• screening and

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