Only 24% of voters know that “cap and trade” describes an environmental policy proposal, according to a new Rasmussen poll. Matthew Yglesias at ThinkProgress cited the results this week, and also noted that 46% of respondents guessed that cap and trade involves Wall Street regulation or health care.

The KLD Blog is not typically concerned with opinion polls, but this survey hits close to home. As stated on our “About” page, “KLD analysts stay apprised of economic, financial and political developments worldwide, and the KLD Blog shares our expertise with you.”

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As noted by Robert Kropp at Social Funds, 2009 is witnessing a dramatic increase in “say on pay” shareholder resolutions. He gives some credit for this to “public outrage” over executive compensation levels during a worldwide recession. Shareholder engagement is also driven by sustainable and socially responsible investment (SRI) advocates, who help investors work together to achieve common goals.

Green America (formerly Co-op America) recently launched a “proxy education center” for shareholders. With support from Ceres, the AFL-CIO, and the Interfaith Center for Corporate Responsibility, the site offers guidance on proposed resolutions in four topic areas at 23 major companies.

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The British journal Responsible Investor has published an interview with Gro Nystuen, chair of the Norwegian state investment fund’s Council of Ethics. Norway’s government is a leading advocate and practitioner of sustainable/socially responsible investing (SRI).

Ms. Nystuen speaks frankly about how the Norwegian state pension fund puts its good intentions into practice. “The Council consists of five persons who are all experts in the different areas covered by our guidelines,” she says. “This expertise means that we know what we are talking about. It is not a ‘prominent-persons-have-been-politicians’ kind of council, as it could easily have been.”

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The mining and refining of metal is an industry with ancient roots, and it remains essential to the global economy. Even supposedly “clean” industries like electronics depend on mining and smelting, as gold, tin and other metals are found in cell phones, computers and other ubiquitous consumer products.

Industrial mining can have a dramatic impact on the environment, and metals profits also help finance violent unrest in poor nations like the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). Developing nations such as Indonesia, Colombia, and the DRC bear the brunt of mining’s costs, yet downstream consumers – and investors – share responsibility for industry practices.

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Carbon Counts USA, a new report from research firm (and KLD partner) Trucost, studies the “carbon intensity” of 91 major mutual funds. Trucost found wide variation in funds’ carbon footprint, as the highest-carbon fund they studied was 38 times as carbon-intensive as the best performer.

Perhaps due to the Obama Administration’s stated commitment to a national carbon emissions market, Carbon Counts USA (available here) has attracted attention from the business press. Dow Jones’ Daisy Maxey writes that major fund managers are “responding cautiously” to the implication that they should consider companies’ carbon footprints:

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As the world’s economy has become more deeply integrated, some investors have sought to hold companies responsible for labor practices throughout their global supply chain. Norges Bank Investment Management (NBIM), which manages pension funds for the government of Norway, released a report in March on corporate initiatives to fight exploitation of child labor. The Sector Compliance Report, which considers firms’ compliance with NBIM labor-practice guidelines, supports a “rights-based approach” to the protection of children.

Beyond Philanthropy

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Is it possible that traditional macroeconomics and ecological economics (or sustainability theory) are converging?

Two articles published Sunday morning, April 12, taken together, suggest to me that these fields share an emerging understanding of debt and its essential elements: collateral and leverage. Through these lenses, debt’s charge on the future is coming to be understood as never before.

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Given what we now know about the effects of finance economics models on the markets – that they create portfolios that mimic each other – Keynes’ observations in his General Theory on Americans and how they invest seems strangely prophetic:

“Even outside the field of finance, Americans are apt to be unduly interested in discovering what average opinion believes average opinion to be; and this national weakness finds its nemesis in the stock market. It is rare, one is told, for an American to invest, as many Englishmen still do, ‘for income’; and he will not readily purchase an investment except in the hope of capital appreciation. This is only another way of saying that, when he purchases an investment, the American is attaching his hopes, not so much to its prospective yield, as to a favourable change in the conventional basis of valuation, i.e., that he is … a speculator.”

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Why read the ever-growing pile of stories of tricksters and con men (and women) in our industry?

Schadenfreude – a delightful German word meaning pleasure from others’ misery, especially of those more rich, famous, etc. than you – is probably why readers devour these stories. But financial services professionals should be reading them for the same reasons that law students and business school students study cases: to develop their instincts.

Madoff madness has all but hidden the stories – very different from his – of other apparent predators brought to ground in last fall’s crash. Marc Dreier is one of those.

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Global financial regulatory reform is a priority at this week’s G-20 summit in London. What Bloomberg calls “an effort to rewrite the rules of capitalism” was called a “non-negotiable goal” by French President Nicolas Sarkozy and German Prime Minister Angela Merkel.

This is welcome news for investors represented by the Social Investment Forum (SIF), which has argued that regulatory reform is a necessary response to the global recession. “Systemic weakness after a generation of deregulation is a significant factor in the crisis,” said Damon Silvers, AFL-CIO Associate Counsel and vice chair of the Congressional Oversight Panel (COP).

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