Fossil fuel companies are usually publicly traded and therefore have a legal fiduciary responsibility to the stockholders. Does fiduciary responsibility mean maximizing profits for this quarter? That is what Wall St analysts would have you believe, focusing almost exclusively on next-quarter profits. Divestment often improves value of pension funds. In a changing world, corporate executives are often slow to see the change and realize how it affects them and how it affects the planet.

New York City, for example, has 5 pension funds and the ones that divested found the value of the pension fund go up by billions of dollars. Not listening to divestment activists initially cost NYC pension funds several billion dollars.

Among the largest stockholders in fossil fuel companies are other companies, hedge funds, and pension plans. The divestment movement is working to get those pension plans to divest of their fossil fuel company stocks. It can be to not support fossil fuel pollution, but it also helps the value of the pension funds.

Our guest, Caroline Levine is the Ryan Professor of the Humanities at Cornell University, was part of the team that successfully pressured the Cornell Board of Trustees to divest its endowment of fossil fuels in 2020. She is now a member of the Coordinating Committee for TIAA-Divest (tiaa-divest.org).

On this episode of Eco-Logic, we'll talk about shareholder activism, divestment, and why they’re a good idea, and what you can do. Shareholder activitism can move a company away from polluting and toward climate change solutions. Divestment attempts to remove resources from dirty fossil-fuel projects. We'll find out how the two strategies and tactics can work together and when that has happened.

Our news articles this week are: saving a 150-year-old family farm from eminent domain and changes at the Department of Energy and FERC.

Our song for this episode is “Long-Haired Radical Socialist Jew” by Hugh Blumenfeld.

Tune in on radio or internet to get more details.

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For those who missed last week's show or want to hear it again,

Here is “Nuclear Weapons Proliferation: The Peaceful Atom Goes to War”

https://www.wbai.org/archive/program/episode/?id=61770

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Ken Gale, Donna Stein, Sally Gellert, and Charlie Olson/TheEnvironmentTV