Coal and the iron and steel works that consumed it were, 125 years ago, the foundations of Andrew Carnegie’s fortune.(1) So, his life would seem unlikely to hold lessons for investors concerned about global warming. But it does.
Carnegie’s Causes
The Scottish immigrant had two great causes. Most recognize his name today in the US and UK for his philanthropic investments in vehicles offering opportunities for human betterment: Carnegie libraries, university scholarships, Carnegie Hall, Carnegie Mellon University, teacher pensions (TIAA-CREF), etc.
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PIMCO’s Bill Gross devotes his June Investment Outlook to “the debate about the authenticity of U.S. inflation.” Gross says that this debate “has been joined by the press and astute authors such as Kevin Phillips.” (Gross calls Phillips’ new book “Bad Money,” which was excerpted in a recent Harper’s article, “as good a summer read detailing the state of the economy and how we got here as an ‘informed’ American could make.”)
Gross describes a study that compares U.S. inflation with that of 24 other nations:
These representative countries, chosen and graphed by Ed Hyman and ISI, have averaged nearly 7% inflation for the past decade, while the U.S. has measured 2.6%. The most recent 12 months produces that same 7% number for the world but a closer 4% in the U.S.
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The Rev. Dr. Luther Tyson, a founder of Pax World Funds, has died at 85.
In any short list of SRI’s indispensible people, Dr. Tyson’s name would appear close to the top. He was one of the founders of the Pax World Fund, the first SRI mutual fund. Pax World was also the first management company devoted solely to SRI.
His vision of a fund for investors who did not want to own companies that profited from the Vietnam War helped establish the legitimacy of using ethical values to guide investment decisions.
His obituary from the Boston Globe appears below.
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National Advisors Trust Conference
Hilton Head, South Carolina
April 24, 2008
SRI’s Moment
I’ve been deeply involved with socially responsible investing – SRI – since 1983. Three times since then I’ve heard, “SRI’s time is here!”
I heard it first in the late 1980s, following the South Africa divestment legislation and the Exxon Valdez disaster. SRI grew, but not exuberantly.
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How much corporate social responsibility (CSR) is enough? How much CSR reporting is enough?
These questions start from a mistaken notion of what the responsibility of corporations is.
Former Shell director Sir Geoffrey Chandler once said of “corporate social responsibility”: “I know of no phrase which has done more damage to constructive thought or caused greater confusion. It has encouraged the belief that a company’s responsibility to society lies in voluntary philanthropic add-ons, rather than the application of principle to all its activities.” (1)
By Chandler’s light, “how much CSR” questions make no sense.
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Not long ago, I reread George Eliot’s Middlemarch.
I’ll have more to say about this unforgettable novel about social change in the countryside at one of the great inflection points in British history. But these two quotations, I thought, merited attention by themselves:
On one point he may fairly claim approval at this particular stage of his career; he did not mean to imitate those philanthropic models who make a profit out of poisonous pickles to support themselves while they are exposing adulteration, or hold shares in a gambling-hell that they may have leisure to represent the cause of public morality.
George Eliot, Middlemarch [1872] (New York: Bantam Classics, 1985), p. 133.
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Co-Chair, Peter Kinder’s, Opening Remarks(1)
American Conference Institute
Warwick Hotel, New York City
February 27, 2008
What are the only three things you need to know about real estate? Location. Location. Location!
Well, there’s the conference….
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Eighteen months ago, cheers from environmentalists and their allies greeted Sir Nicholas Stern’s report on the economics of global warming. George Monbiot has taken another look at the Stern Report and not liked what he found. Monbiot is the author of Heat, a fine book on global warming and what to do about it. He writes regularly for the Guardian and is well worth following.
-Peter D. Kinder
ZNet Commentary
An Exchange of Souls
February 19, 2008
By George Monbiot
This is a column about how good intentions can run amok. It tells the story of how an honourable, intelligent man set out to avert environmental disaster and ended up accidentally promoting the economics of the slave trade. It shows how human lives can be priced and exchanged for goods and services.
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“You need to really scrub your investment portfolios, because I guarantee you — as my longtime good redneck friends in Tennessee say, I guarandamntee you — that if you really take a fine-tooth comb and go through your portfolios, many of you are going to find them chock-full of subprime carbon assets….
Similarly, the assumption that you can safely invest in assets that come from business models that assume carbon is free is an assumption that is about to go splat. You have lots of assets, many of you do, in your portfolios right now that truly do deserve that epithet ’subprime.’”
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On February 12, the Unitarian Universalist Association, Walden Asset Management and KLD sponsored a talk by Laura Berry, Executive Director of the Interfaith Center on Corporate Responsibility (ICCR).
I had the privilege of introducing her. These were my remarks.
In introducing my old friend, Laura Berry, I want to state the glaringly obvious: Without ICCR, SRI as we know it wouldn’t exist. It would not exist.
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