2009 Shareholder Advocacy At-A-Glance
Since Investing For A Better World is a quarterly publication, we lack the space to write about all of our advocacy initiatives in depth. But at the end of each proxy season, we attempt to give them all their due at least graphically! Elsewhere on this site, you’ll find the text of every shareholder resolution that we sponsor (and co-sponsor, in which we take a lesser role). Lead Files AT&T Omitted Internet privacy & freedom of expression CenturyTel 30.5% Internet privacy & freedom of expression Chevron 7% Strengthen global environmental standards ConocoPhillips 30.5% Report on impact of tar sands Dominion …
ConocoPhillips Cops Out on Aggrieved Refinery Neighbors
In early June, I traveled with members of the Interfaith Center for Corporate Responsibility (ICCR) through Louisiana’s heavily industrialized and highly polluted 85-mile stretch between New Orleans and Baton Rouge known as “Cancer Alley,” then further west to the town of Mossville, a cancer alley unto its own. Our guides were leaders from local environmental justice, indigenous community, and coastal restoration groups, including the New Orleans-based Advocates for Environmental Human Rights (AEHR), which fight to restore the state’s damaged coastline and obtain environmental justice for neglected communities. Mossville was once rich in biodiversity and natural resources. The country town was …
Strategic View: Should We Wish for High or Low Gas Prices?
While it’s easy to blame paltry U.S. gas taxes on auto executives and the craven politicians who work for them, in fact low gas prices are wildly popular in the United States, particularly among the poorer half of the income distribution. What we environmentalists often have missed in the debate over policy is the pressure felt by struggling U.S. families teetering over a frayed social safety net. Gas taxes are extremely regressive, meaning the poorer you are, the higher the percentage of your income that is affected. Energy costs eat up 15 percent of the poorest households’ income, compared to …
Chevron Liability in Ecuador Pollution Case Approaches $27 Billion
Court Judgment Expected This Year by Shelley Alpern Five years ago, I had the privilege of getting a firsthand look at the evidence in one of the most important lawsuits being heard anywhere in the world. The exhibits are a number of oily pits and ponds scattered throughout the state of Sucumbios, Ecuador, right in the middle of the Amazon rainforest. The contamination is allegedly the work of Texaco, the first petroleum company to break ground in Ecuador in the early 1970s. The court case is being heard in Lago Agrio, a sad-looking town whose many ramshackle buildings look far …
What Goes Up Doesn’t Always Go Up
The latest disaster in the financial markets has once again shown that some of the biggest risks investors face derive from the excesses of free markets themselves. This time it was unregulated lending, leverage and speculation. In 2000 it was over-optimistic and at times corrupt Wall Street analysts, gobbling up creative corporate accounting that massaged income statements to show profits where there were none. Some of the other systemic risks embedded in financial markets are barely on the radar screen of most investors. These range from unregulated pollution causing global warming, to the worrisome increase in nuclear proliferation during the …
2008 Advocacy Review
For our 2008 advocacy efforts, we’re pleased to report a fair amount of progress — never as much as we’d like (we’d like superhero powers), but enough to confirm that shareholder activism remains a potent tool for change. Climate change. Our shareholder resolution at ConocoPhillips requesting a report on the environmental and social impacts of tar sands drilling won almost 28% of the vote, an impressive vote in this arena. Our resolution at Bank of America addressing its financing of coal-fired power plants and mountaintop coal removal was deemed inadmissible by the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), but we eventually …
No Surprises, Please: How an Outdated Regulation Shields the True Extent of Corporate Liabilities
Four years ago, Merck‘s blockbuster anti-anflammatory drug Vioxx came under intense scrutiny. The highly profitable medication was discovered to be closely linked to increased risk of heart attack and stroke, and a flood of litigation followed. The rise and fall of the product was of historic proportions, not only for the company, but for the drug market as well. When it was pulled from pharmacies in September of that year, it was one of the most widely used drugs ever to be withdrawn in the United States. On November 1, 2007, during the height of the litigation, Merck filed its …
Strategic View
Do Markets Need Government? When I studied and taught economics 25 years ago, the basic model of efficient markets was straightforward. Investors and businesses maximize profit, consumers seek value for money, workers search for lucrative jobs. Competitive market forces were central, although market failures were acknowledged: the maldistribution of income and “externalities” such as pollution and crime that are not reflected in market prices. The role of government was to efficiently remediate these failures, to regulate, tax or otherwise “get the prices right.” What happens, however, when self-interested capitalists understand that social inequities and externalities like pollution and nuclear proliferation …
2008 Advocacy Priorities
For the 2007-2008 shareholder resolution season (which roughly parallels an academic year), Trillium Asset Management Corporation (“Trillium”) has filed 18 shareholder proposals addressing a wide range of environmental and social justice concerns. Thirteen resolutions on which we are acting as lead* filer are highlighted in this article. All the proposals we are involved in are posted on our web site. Among its Wall Street peers, Bank of America (BAC)‘s internal greenhouse gas (GHG) reduction goals look good upon a first read: the bank has pledged that emissions from its own offices by will decline 7 percent from 2004 levels by …
Bank of America – Moritorium on Coal Financing (2008)
WHEREAS Bank of America (BOA) is a diversified financial services company providing banking,investment, investment banking, credit card and consumer finance services.BOA recognizes that its ability to attract and retain customers and employees could be adversely affected “to the extent our reputation is damaged” and that “failure to address, or to appear to fail to address various issues” could damage the Corporation and its business prospects. (2005 Annual Report)BOA also recognizes that: The health of our company is dependent on the health of communities and our society; Climate change and atmospheric pollution represent a risk to the ultimate stability and sustainability …
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