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Wouldn't it be better to invest directly into emerging alternative sources instead? Dividends in anything will only be about 5% of the money invested, meanwhil

Wouldn't it be better to invest directly into emerging alternative sources instead? Dividends in anything will only be about 5% of the money invested, meanwhile you've given 20 times more money to the fossil fuel companies, who will use that money to lobby to keep themselves in power and shut out or slow alternative fuel companies as much as possible. Granted the dividend pays multiple times, but still. Seems to me like that could be counterproductive overall. If you want to go the forwarding dividends route, why not invest in a non-fossil fuel company and use those dividends to invest in alternative fuel companies? You'd be able to use almost the same amount of money without directly supporting fossil fuel companies (those other companies might be almost as bad, though, for other reasons).

suoduandao2 4y ago
Because the trouble I'm suggesting OP could do something about isn't precisely that there are no investors in alternative fuels. It's that too much of the money ever put into fossil fuels gets reinvested in fossil fuels, which makes said lobbying much more desperate than it could be were the money part of a mixed portfolio that started out with mostly fossil assets but reinvests outside it. It also makes it necessary for fossil companies to drop the price precipitously when there is a downturn, which shakes out a lot of promising alternate startups. If the backers had the capacity to wait out a fossil fuel downturn, those resources could be sold later at top dollar, but that would require a diversified approach. It's obviously not as simple as what I'm imagining (not a finance guy here, just an enthusiastic private investor) but what I'm sure needs to happen at the macro level is that the returns from capital currently invested in fossil fuels need to go to nonfossil investments in a gradual, continuous manner so that costs can be averaged out over a number of business cycles. If that happens, we'll probably be okay when the fuels do run out. If capital sources for clean vs fossil are segregated and antagonistic, fossil will simply win.

suoduandao2 4y ago

Because the trouble I'm suggesting OP could do something about isn't precisely that there are no investors in alternative fuels. It's that too much of the money ever put into fossil fuels gets reinvested in fossil fuels, which makes said lobbying much more desperate than it could be were the money part of a mixed portfolio that started out with mostly fossil assets but reinvests outside it. It also makes it necessary for fossil companies to drop the price precipitously when there is a downturn, which shakes out a lot of promising alternate startups. If the backers had the capacity to wait out a fossil fuel downturn, those resources could be sold later at top dollar, but that would require a diversified approach. It's obviously not as simple as what I'm imagining (not a finance guy here, just an enthusiastic private investor) but what I'm sure needs to happen at the macro level is that the returns from capital currently invested in fossil fuels need to go to nonfossil investments in a gradual, continuous manner so that costs can be averaged out over a number of business cycles. If that happens, we'll probably be okay when the fuels do run out. If capital sources for clean vs fossil are segregated and antagonistic, fossil will simply win.