8 ms·

Morgan Stanley Follows Citi, BofA in Quitting Climate Group

71 points by richrichie 2y ago

SJC_Hacker 2y ago
If the government isn't going to do anything meaningful, and people continue to put people in office who won't do anything meaningful, then whats the point?
- pseudony 2y ago
  Unless you have no kids or grandkids to think of, it really matters. Government or not, even companies are made up of people. People with family. That is what baffles me. It's like saying "meh, our kids aren't worth the effort". Sure, the C-suite can probably ensure their kids are adequately housed and educated to make their way in a more hostile and broken world. But what about the rest of them? And will there be enough residual wealth to shelter the grandkids, too?
  - eej71 2y ago
    I know that I am in the minority in these parts. But I'm glad to see these banks pull out of these net-zero related efforts. For me, and again I know I'm in the minority here, net-zero puts a huge cramp on productivity and building out what we need for civilization. These net-zero aren't progressive - they are regressive. What we need is build. To drill. To create. For that, we need all the energy sources we can pull from. Fossil. Nuclear. And yes, solar and wind too. Hydro. Net-zero is what will pull down everyone. But our worldviews are radically different here.
    - Mistletoe 2y ago
      Why do we need to create and use so much? People aren’t happier now, they are less happy. That’s all that matters. And the world population isn’t growing like we thought. We need to use much less. As a former guy that grew microbes, I remember what happened to flasks where the bacteria just use all the resources they can, the whole flask dies.
      - deleted 2y ago
        [deleted]
    - lesuorac 2y ago
      Well, Drilling like Hydro has very large ecological impacts at scale. Really should just be building a lot more nuclear plants to drive energy costs to 0 but that's too much government overreach or something ...
      - cheema33 2y ago
        > Really should just be building a lot more nuclear plants to drive energy costs to 0 Nuclear costs more than many other alternatives.
        NewJazz 2y ago
        Practically, sure. But physically? Debatable. A lot of the cost has to do with the time necessary to build the plant (with permits et al), and the money that gets tied up as a result.
    - NewJazz 2y ago
      Why do we need to do all that? Why do we need unlimited energy? Can you really not foresee problems with that, if everyone could drive/fly/boat as long and as fast as they want because fuel is basically free?
      - intended 2y ago
        Thing is, people who foresee problems happen to be the people who have the education to talk about them. The rest of the world is in the dark ages. Imagine being told they will never have a chance to get to a better life? Imagine being told you will lose what you have because people in the west blew it all up. Heck, given how crazy things in general are, I wouldnt be surprised if people start throwing nukes around as "solutions" or as "fuck you"s.
      - rangestransform 2y ago
        We don’t need to do anything, we didn’t need to start farming, we didn’t need to start reading and writing, and so forth. The journey of mankind has been to get closer to doing what we want, whenever we want.
        NewJazz 2y ago
        I wasn't asking you. The commenter specifically used the term "need".
        deleted 2y ago
        [deleted]
    - travisporter 2y ago
      Are you describing accelerationism?
    - Certhas 2y ago
      We now live in a 1.5 degree warmer world. We can empirically study how much that level of warming is costing us already. It turns out that the measurable effects of warming on GDP absolutely dwarf the costs of mitigation. Ignoring climate change constraints in developing civilization will make us all poorer. Again, the effect of warming on GDP is measured, not postulated.
      - mike_hearn 2y ago
        > It turns out that the measurable effects of warming on GDP absolutely dwarf the costs of mitigation How are you calculating this?
        Certhas 2y ago
        This is based on regional economic data, e.g.: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41558-020-00985-5 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41558-020-00985-5 and follow up works. The methods are fairly straightforward. Panel regression with temperature effects on top of a per region and per year background. As I understand it, there is some disagreement for how to exactly aggregate the growth effects over time. But to me what was shocking about this is just how clearly you already see the impacts in existing _macroeconomic_ data, once it's sufficiently high spatial resolution. I am in the "who really cares about GDP" camp generally, it's a very crude measure. I was not expecting to see climate impacts to show up in GDP data for quite some time.
        mike_hearn 2y ago
        Have you actually read that paper? I ask as it doesn't seem to be open access. It seems clearly absurd, though. They claim that 1 degree of temperature variance reduces GDP by 5pp, which is an insanely huge effect. They're saying that variability (not growth) of a size you can't even feel would eliminate the entirety of US economic growth and push the rest of the world into a large recession. This kind of paper where you regress things against each other with no attempt to understand or explain the underlying causalities, nor have any ability to validate the results, is the sort of thing that yields false positive results all the time, it's textbook replication crisis stuff.
    - intended 2y ago
      I agree! I think we should be just chucking excess heat off of earth with massive mirros or micro waves. There is surely no way we stop producing, even if the world burns to a crisp. Embrace the nihilism is my current stance. People think they need optimism to think and feel ok. Turns out you can feel perfectly fine and productive when you assume the world is coming to an end as well! Its just a matter of perspective, what matters is having a clear plan for what you think will happen, and executing on it. It doesnt matter if the plan may be grim to others. This is just reality, reality doesnt care about someones feelings.
      - MrMcCall 2y ago
        That attitude will reap you a bitter crop, friend.
        eej71 2y ago
        I think those comments are intended to be a satirical evaluation of what I said above. Poe's Law strikes again?
        MrMcCall 2y ago
        I hope so! I am rather literal-minded, usually speaking plainly, which means I tend to read others as tho they speak in the same way. Thanks for the heads-up, friend.
    - weweersdfsd 2y ago
      Build and create what? More cheap plastic junk for consumers? Big SUV cars for middle class that could very well drive a Corolla? Cloud services delivering social media that negatively impacts people's mental health, but makes billionaires a lot of money? Most energy out there already goes to causes that do nothing whatsoever to advance humanity's future or to improve people's lives. Burning fossil fuels to produce that waste of energy is absolute madness. If we are to waste energy, it should at least be produced in a manner that doesn't doom future generations.
  - graemep 2y ago
    > It's like saying "meh, our kids aren't worth the effort". That is only true if you think this is a worthwhile effort. I have no idea what the Net Zero Banking Alliance achieves, but its perfectly possible its not achieving anything worthwhile. if you regard climate change as an emergency, then a target of achieving net zero in 2050 is probably pretty useless.
    - JKCalhoun 2y ago
      > That is only true if you think this is a worthwhile effort. I have no idea what the Net Zero Banking Alliance achieves, but it's perfectly possible it's not achieving anything worthwhile. You would expect then that these banks would announce a new alliance, a new effort they are leading to reduce carbon emissions.
  - Workaccount2 2y ago
    It's a tragedy of the commons situation. Anyone who takes on additional costs will be punished for it, because the hive mind of society always (read: _always_) (let me reiterate: always) favors lowest cost, all else being equal. If your SaaS costs $12/mo because you voluntarily pay for offsetting all emissions that result, you are going to be hard pressed to beat the guy who doesn't give a fuck about emissions and offers an equal product for $10/mo. The only way is to regulate these things to force compliance between all competitors. Emissions have a real cost, but it is far enough in the future to hide it. The government needs to force that cost into the present.
    - deleted 2y ago
      [deleted]
    - sofixa 2y ago
      > because the hive mind of society always (read: _always_) (let me reiterate: always) favors lowest cost, all else being equal All else is rarely equal. Be it with luxury brands, or with sustainability. See airlines giving consumers the option to pay for Sustainable Aviation Fuel, people literally pay more for the exact same product just because of the wider environmental benefits.
  - coliveira 2y ago
    Rich people don't worry about this. They can always buy whatever they need to survive. And workers in a company have to do whatever they're told to, just to maintain their job. So don't expect them to do anything, specially if rich people need to make less money in the process.
  - MrMcCall 2y ago
    There are many people who simply don't give a da_n about any one, even their own kids. I know that sounds crazy to the vast majority of us (and it is crazy, for sure), but we are not the super-rich, and they are not like us, my friend. In the very rare situations where they are like us, you get Bezos' ex-wife, a true rarity who turns her wealth into others' happiness. It is very difficult for an average person to understand how callous and/or cruel a person can be when they are seeking more pleasure out of this world's resources. A person must begin the positive long tail of spiritual development to grok the negative long tail. The >80% of folks in neither long tail just have no clue, my friend.
  - NoboruWataya 2y ago
    > It's like saying "meh, our kids aren't worth the effort". I don't think it's like saying that. In most cases the point is there is no amount of effort that an individual (or even a small group) can make that would solve the problem. I'm not saying I agree with that reasoning, but it is very different to saying our kids aren't worth the effort. Like if a child was sick, a parent might genuinely believe that they would chop their arm off to save them, but they don't because it won't actually fix anything. I think very few people (1) believe that climate change is a real and existential threat; and (2) believe that their actions can stop climate change; but (3) decide it's not worth taking those actions.
    - sofixa 2y ago
      I think big banks are definitely up there with the organisations that can have legitimate worldwide impact on climate change. So it's matter of either not believing in it, or deciding it's not worth it.
- polski-g 2y ago
  The government is doing very meaningful things: https://x.com/AndrewKelleyCA/status/1683151483687116802?t=47qkMdWazw5Ova6WNyn8UQ&s=19 https://x.com/AndrewKelleyCA/status/1683151483687116802?t=47...
  - sfblah 2y ago
    I don't see any evidence there that the government did this. Isn't it more likely this is a result of the US shipping all its manufacturing overseas?
  - andy_ppp 2y ago
    I have no idea what that includes? For example presumably Chinese goods that Americans buy are excluded? What about shipping? Etc.
  - darzu 2y ago
    This is missing much, including that we've outsourced our manufacturing (and thus CO2 from manufacturing) but we still buy lots of stuff that requires intense manufacturing.
  - Yizahi 2y ago
    We can't count emissions, at most we can estimate them and hope that we would be only one order of magnitude off and not worse. Numbers like that are politically motivated. On the other hand we can directly measure actual gas in the atmosphere. Every one of us can replicate these measurements with 100$ analyzer. These numbers show that the planet as a whole is doing jack shit regarding reducing climate change: https://keelingcurve.ucsd.edu/ https://keelingcurve.ucsd.edu/
giantg2 2y ago
Not surprising. There are less than 140 banks in the alliance globally. There are only something like 3-4 in the US. They're not going to spend time and money on the alliance when their competitors don't.
hodgesrm 2y ago
[flagged]
- wesselbindt 2y ago
  > It should be enough to make companies answerable to shareholders It very obviously isn't. The prime incentive for shareholders is profit (which is only natural), and this is in many, many cases demonstrably misaligned with what's best for society. Cases in point: health insurance, the military industrial complex, fossil fuel based companies, education, landlords, big tech.
- snakeyjake 2y ago
  "I disagree with this decision" -literally every critic of this decision "This sounds the same as a movement where millions were forcibly relocated to be worked to death while zealots chanted slogans and firebombed political opponents and a wave of massacres swept the nation" -you Chill out dude.
- drawkward 2y ago
  ThIs Is LiTeRaL CoMmUnIsM
josefritzishere 2y ago
Well that's ominous.
crowcroft 2y ago
Do these groups achieve anything meaningful? Feels like the kind of thing companies sign up to so they can get some PR and say they're being 'responsible'. Like Exxon was/is an ESG friendly stock, but Tesla isn't. Regardless of how you feel about Elon, the real impact both companies have on the environment shows the absurdity of all this corporate green washing nonsense.
- Wowfunhappy 2y ago
  But don't you think it's concerning if they're not even attempting to keep up with appearances anymore?
  - bdcravens 2y ago
    Myself I prefer they are honest about it. There's no value in a false sense of security.
    - llamaimperative 2y ago
      This relies on the totally unsubstantiated view that a less appealing outward appearance is more honest. If you believe corporations tend to fall short of their external appearances, then what reason do you have to believe this isn’t still the case, but from a lower basis? I.e. you assume: Before: 8 goodness points (apparent) = 6 goodness points (actual) Now: 6 goodness points (apparent) = 6 goodness points (actual) Wouldn’t your logic actually indicate their new goodness points (actual) should be 4?
  - prepend 2y ago
    I think “keeping up appearances” is too subjective to be meaningful. It seems like something that someone will always think they aren’t or are, so you have to poll people or whatever to figure it out. So it will lead to me chasing something I can’t know well. I’d rather avoid these sort of meaningless labels and just focus on doing what I think is important. Like it I wanted to reduce climate impact and I was a bank, I would set up a page that lists all the ways I impact climate.
openrisk 2y ago
Brief background: the Net-Zero Banking Alliance launched in 2021 and by now it includes the majority of large European banks [1]. The departure of Morgan Stanley means they are now less than a handful US banks participating (notably sustainability oriented ones like Amalgamated and Climate First). [1] https://www.unepfi.org/net-zero-banking/members/ https://www.unepfi.org/net-zero-banking/members/
zelias 2y ago
I think it's a shame that ESG/DEI/etc all got lumped in together by the culture warriors on various ends of the spectrum. It makes logical sense that a business that acts responsibly vis-a-vis its environmental externalities would generate greater value in the long run (whether because they've avoided fines, or reduced the negative externalities, or whatever) [0]. I don't think we'd have as much of this climate backtracking if the "E" had been kept separate from the "S" and the "G". Unfortunately, now it's all been lumped together as part of the never ending culture war. Shame. [0] This doesn't speak to the problem of "greenwashing" investments, but that's a different thread imo.
no-dr-onboard 2y ago
It's almost as though companies should be most concerned with profit and not unproductive virtue based working groups that don't produce shareholder value /shrug.
- poncho_romero 2y ago
  won't you hippies shut up and think about the shareholders?
  - no-dr-onboard 2y ago
    I'd be satisfied with just the first half of this sentence. What they think about the shareholders is entirely irrelevant. Let them do their thing while the company does their own. Distinct entities.
- BobAliceInATree 2y ago
  It's hard to make profits when you're underwater.
- ericjmorey 2y ago
  Discounting the economic benefits of social stability to the point where you don't expend any effort to mitigate resource wars isn't good business for banks.
- NikolaNovak 2y ago
  I found it fascinating recently (last few years) to try, myself, to consider and challenge that axiom/assumption. Analogy: though I've always been an atheist, the cultural conditioning is so strong, that in my 20's it took me a LOT of conscious effort to consider the notion that "Religion should not be treated specially" (when it comes to e.g. tax breaks, protection, freedom of speech, etc). On this too then, I've been strongly conditioned that "company's only prerogative is and should be shareholder value", that it took me a lot of effort to consider it critically, but... it's just a sentence, a statement. It's no more true than we desire it to be. Or to put it another way - if company's ONLY priority is shareholder value, over consumer interest, employee well-being, external impact, and long term picture... the system is as broken as the more aggressive amongst us have banged the drums it to be.
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
fancyfredbot 2y ago
https://archive.is/HxhvK https://archive.is/HxhvK
moominpapa 2y ago
[flagged]
- netsharc 2y ago
  You seem to be implying that this percentage is very low, so how could it be responsible for climate change? You seem to be doing the opposite of your question, knowing the answer to the question and then concluding (without knowledge of how the whole system works) that since it's so low that it couldn't be responsible for drastic changes.
  - moominpapa 2y ago
    Yes, the implication is there and I am happy to be shown why CO2 is so key when man-made contributions to that tiny amount is so small also
    - netsharc 2y ago
      Aha... I like the confidence that "I'm right, all those climate scientists are swindlers", based on your knowledge that "0.04% is a very small number". True, you probably would not lose sleep after e.g. losing 0.04% of your investments, but I dare say, believing this translates to the area of climate change is an act of supreme ignorance. As for the rest of your stance, I asked ChatGPT: https://chatgpt.com/share/6776fe8b-8bd0-800e-875f-bae617ccfd18 https://chatgpt.com/share/6776fe8b-8bd0-800e-875f-bae617ccfd...
      - moominpapa 2y ago
        You appear to have created a straw man. Your prompt assumes I am a climate change denier, when it might have been better to have labelled me a man-made climate change skeptic. Not sure chatGPT is the way to go on this one as I'd imagine it will be weighted towards the consensus. There was once a consensus that the Earth was the centre of the Universe. Anyway thanks for the link, I enjoyed it.
        2y ago
dabaja 2y ago
Why am I not surprised? We’re starting 2025 just as we ended 2024—with masks dropping everywhere. From Big Oil slashing investments in green energy, to U.S. banks walking back on sustainability-linked loans, to the EU's push for an omnibus that could weaken already fragile regulations. And let’s not even get started on carbon markets turning into a growing scam. Maybe it’s a good thing? Clarity can be painful, but it’s better than living in illusions. Time to take the reins ourselves—invest consciously, act decisively, and demand accountability. This is my wish for all of us in 2025: that we see things as they are, not as we wish they were, and have the courage to drive the change we need. Apologies if this sounds overly philosophical—blame it on the rainy Brussels weather. It does things to a person!

71 points by richrichie 2y ago

If the government isn't going to do anything meaningful, and people continue to put people in office who won't do anything meaningful, then whats the point?

pseudony 2y ago
Unless you have no kids or grandkids to think of, it really matters. Government or not, even companies are made up of people. People with family. That is what baffles me. It's like saying "meh, our kids aren't worth the effort". Sure, the C-suite can probably ensure their kids are adequately housed and educated to make their way in a more hostile and broken world. But what about the rest of them? And will there be enough residual wealth to shelter the grandkids, too?
- eej71 2y ago
  I know that I am in the minority in these parts. But I'm glad to see these banks pull out of these net-zero related efforts. For me, and again I know I'm in the minority here, net-zero puts a huge cramp on productivity and building out what we need for civilization. These net-zero aren't progressive - they are regressive. What we need is build. To drill. To create. For that, we need all the energy sources we can pull from. Fossil. Nuclear. And yes, solar and wind too. Hydro. Net-zero is what will pull down everyone. But our worldviews are radically different here.
  - Mistletoe 2y ago
    Why do we need to create and use so much? People aren’t happier now, they are less happy. That’s all that matters. And the world population isn’t growing like we thought. We need to use much less. As a former guy that grew microbes, I remember what happened to flasks where the bacteria just use all the resources they can, the whole flask dies.
    - deleted 2y ago
      [deleted]
  - lesuorac 2y ago
    Well, Drilling like Hydro has very large ecological impacts at scale. Really should just be building a lot more nuclear plants to drive energy costs to 0 but that's too much government overreach or something ...
    - cheema33 2y ago
      > Really should just be building a lot more nuclear plants to drive energy costs to 0 Nuclear costs more than many other alternatives.
      - NewJazz 2y ago
        Practically, sure. But physically? Debatable. A lot of the cost has to do with the time necessary to build the plant (with permits et al), and the money that gets tied up as a result.
  - NewJazz 2y ago
    Why do we need to do all that? Why do we need unlimited energy? Can you really not foresee problems with that, if everyone could drive/fly/boat as long and as fast as they want because fuel is basically free?
    - intended 2y ago
      Thing is, people who foresee problems happen to be the people who have the education to talk about them. The rest of the world is in the dark ages. Imagine being told they will never have a chance to get to a better life? Imagine being told you will lose what you have because people in the west blew it all up. Heck, given how crazy things in general are, I wouldnt be surprised if people start throwing nukes around as "solutions" or as "fuck you"s.
    - rangestransform 2y ago
      We don’t need to do anything, we didn’t need to start farming, we didn’t need to start reading and writing, and so forth. The journey of mankind has been to get closer to doing what we want, whenever we want.
      - NewJazz 2y ago
        I wasn't asking you. The commenter specifically used the term "need".
        deleted 2y ago
        [deleted]
  - travisporter 2y ago
    Are you describing accelerationism?
  - Certhas 2y ago
    We now live in a 1.5 degree warmer world. We can empirically study how much that level of warming is costing us already. It turns out that the measurable effects of warming on GDP absolutely dwarf the costs of mitigation. Ignoring climate change constraints in developing civilization will make us all poorer. Again, the effect of warming on GDP is measured, not postulated.
    - mike_hearn 2y ago
      > It turns out that the measurable effects of warming on GDP absolutely dwarf the costs of mitigation How are you calculating this?
      - Certhas 2y ago
        This is based on regional economic data, e.g.: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41558-020-00985-5 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41558-020-00985-5 and follow up works. The methods are fairly straightforward. Panel regression with temperature effects on top of a per region and per year background. As I understand it, there is some disagreement for how to exactly aggregate the growth effects over time. But to me what was shocking about this is just how clearly you already see the impacts in existing _macroeconomic_ data, once it's sufficiently high spatial resolution. I am in the "who really cares about GDP" camp generally, it's a very crude measure. I was not expecting to see climate impacts to show up in GDP data for quite some time.
        mike_hearn 2y ago
        Have you actually read that paper? I ask as it doesn't seem to be open access. It seems clearly absurd, though. They claim that 1 degree of temperature variance reduces GDP by 5pp, which is an insanely huge effect. They're saying that variability (not growth) of a size you can't even feel would eliminate the entirety of US economic growth and push the rest of the world into a large recession. This kind of paper where you regress things against each other with no attempt to understand or explain the underlying causalities, nor have any ability to validate the results, is the sort of thing that yields false positive results all the time, it's textbook replication crisis stuff.
  - intended 2y ago
    I agree! I think we should be just chucking excess heat off of earth with massive mirros or micro waves. There is surely no way we stop producing, even if the world burns to a crisp. Embrace the nihilism is my current stance. People think they need optimism to think and feel ok. Turns out you can feel perfectly fine and productive when you assume the world is coming to an end as well! Its just a matter of perspective, what matters is having a clear plan for what you think will happen, and executing on it. It doesnt matter if the plan may be grim to others. This is just reality, reality doesnt care about someones feelings.
    - MrMcCall 2y ago
      That attitude will reap you a bitter crop, friend.
      - eej71 2y ago
        I think those comments are intended to be a satirical evaluation of what I said above. Poe's Law strikes again?
        MrMcCall 2y ago
        I hope so! I am rather literal-minded, usually speaking plainly, which means I tend to read others as tho they speak in the same way. Thanks for the heads-up, friend.
  - weweersdfsd 2y ago
    Build and create what? More cheap plastic junk for consumers? Big SUV cars for middle class that could very well drive a Corolla? Cloud services delivering social media that negatively impacts people's mental health, but makes billionaires a lot of money? Most energy out there already goes to causes that do nothing whatsoever to advance humanity's future or to improve people's lives. Burning fossil fuels to produce that waste of energy is absolute madness. If we are to waste energy, it should at least be produced in a manner that doesn't doom future generations.
- graemep 2y ago
  > It's like saying "meh, our kids aren't worth the effort". That is only true if you think this is a worthwhile effort. I have no idea what the Net Zero Banking Alliance achieves, but its perfectly possible its not achieving anything worthwhile. if you regard climate change as an emergency, then a target of achieving net zero in 2050 is probably pretty useless.
  - JKCalhoun 2y ago
    > That is only true if you think this is a worthwhile effort. I have no idea what the Net Zero Banking Alliance achieves, but it's perfectly possible it's not achieving anything worthwhile. You would expect then that these banks would announce a new alliance, a new effort they are leading to reduce carbon emissions.
- Workaccount2 2y ago
  It's a tragedy of the commons situation. Anyone who takes on additional costs will be punished for it, because the hive mind of society always (read: _always_) (let me reiterate: always) favors lowest cost, all else being equal. If your SaaS costs $12/mo because you voluntarily pay for offsetting all emissions that result, you are going to be hard pressed to beat the guy who doesn't give a fuck about emissions and offers an equal product for $10/mo. The only way is to regulate these things to force compliance between all competitors. Emissions have a real cost, but it is far enough in the future to hide it. The government needs to force that cost into the present.
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
  - sofixa 2y ago
    > because the hive mind of society always (read: _always_) (let me reiterate: always) favors lowest cost, all else being equal All else is rarely equal. Be it with luxury brands, or with sustainability. See airlines giving consumers the option to pay for Sustainable Aviation Fuel, people literally pay more for the exact same product just because of the wider environmental benefits.
- coliveira 2y ago
  Rich people don't worry about this. They can always buy whatever they need to survive. And workers in a company have to do whatever they're told to, just to maintain their job. So don't expect them to do anything, specially if rich people need to make less money in the process.
- MrMcCall 2y ago
  There are many people who simply don't give a da_n about any one, even their own kids. I know that sounds crazy to the vast majority of us (and it is crazy, for sure), but we are not the super-rich, and they are not like us, my friend. In the very rare situations where they are like us, you get Bezos' ex-wife, a true rarity who turns her wealth into others' happiness. It is very difficult for an average person to understand how callous and/or cruel a person can be when they are seeking more pleasure out of this world's resources. A person must begin the positive long tail of spiritual development to grok the negative long tail. The >80% of folks in neither long tail just have no clue, my friend.
- NoboruWataya 2y ago
  > It's like saying "meh, our kids aren't worth the effort". I don't think it's like saying that. In most cases the point is there is no amount of effort that an individual (or even a small group) can make that would solve the problem. I'm not saying I agree with that reasoning, but it is very different to saying our kids aren't worth the effort. Like if a child was sick, a parent might genuinely believe that they would chop their arm off to save them, but they don't because it won't actually fix anything. I think very few people (1) believe that climate change is a real and existential threat; and (2) believe that their actions can stop climate change; but (3) decide it's not worth taking those actions.
  - sofixa 2y ago
    I think big banks are definitely up there with the organisations that can have legitimate worldwide impact on climate change. So it's matter of either not believing in it, or deciding it's not worth it.
polski-g 2y ago
The government is doing very meaningful things: https://x.com/AndrewKelleyCA/status/1683151483687116802?t=47qkMdWazw5Ova6WNyn8UQ&s=19 https://x.com/AndrewKelleyCA/status/1683151483687116802?t=47...
- sfblah 2y ago
  I don't see any evidence there that the government did this. Isn't it more likely this is a result of the US shipping all its manufacturing overseas?
- andy_ppp 2y ago
  I have no idea what that includes? For example presumably Chinese goods that Americans buy are excluded? What about shipping? Etc.
- darzu 2y ago
  This is missing much, including that we've outsourced our manufacturing (and thus CO2 from manufacturing) but we still buy lots of stuff that requires intense manufacturing.
- Yizahi 2y ago
  We can't count emissions, at most we can estimate them and hope that we would be only one order of magnitude off and not worse. Numbers like that are politically motivated. On the other hand we can directly measure actual gas in the atmosphere. Every one of us can replicate these measurements with 100$ analyzer. These numbers show that the planet as a whole is doing jack shit regarding reducing climate change: https://keelingcurve.ucsd.edu/ https://keelingcurve.ucsd.edu/

giantg2 2y ago

Not surprising. There are less than 140 banks in the alliance globally. There are only something like 3-4 in the US. They're not going to spend time and money on the alliance when their competitors don't.

hodgesrm 2y ago

[flagged]

wesselbindt 2y ago
> It should be enough to make companies answerable to shareholders It very obviously isn't. The prime incentive for shareholders is profit (which is only natural), and this is in many, many cases demonstrably misaligned with what's best for society. Cases in point: health insurance, the military industrial complex, fossil fuel based companies, education, landlords, big tech.
snakeyjake 2y ago
"I disagree with this decision" -literally every critic of this decision "This sounds the same as a movement where millions were forcibly relocated to be worked to death while zealots chanted slogans and firebombed political opponents and a wave of massacres swept the nation" -you Chill out dude.
drawkward 2y ago
ThIs Is LiTeRaL CoMmUnIsM

josefritzishere 2y ago

Well that's ominous.

crowcroft 2y ago

Do these groups achieve anything meaningful? Feels like the kind of thing companies sign up to so they can get some PR and say they're being 'responsible'. Like Exxon was/is an ESG friendly stock, but Tesla isn't. Regardless of how you feel about Elon, the real impact both companies have on the environment shows the absurdity of all this corporate green washing nonsense.

Wowfunhappy 2y ago
But don't you think it's concerning if they're not even attempting to keep up with appearances anymore?
- bdcravens 2y ago
  Myself I prefer they are honest about it. There's no value in a false sense of security.
  - llamaimperative 2y ago
    This relies on the totally unsubstantiated view that a less appealing outward appearance is more honest. If you believe corporations tend to fall short of their external appearances, then what reason do you have to believe this isn’t still the case, but from a lower basis? I.e. you assume: Before: 8 goodness points (apparent) = 6 goodness points (actual) Now: 6 goodness points (apparent) = 6 goodness points (actual) Wouldn’t your logic actually indicate their new goodness points (actual) should be 4?
- prepend 2y ago
  I think “keeping up appearances” is too subjective to be meaningful. It seems like something that someone will always think they aren’t or are, so you have to poll people or whatever to figure it out. So it will lead to me chasing something I can’t know well. I’d rather avoid these sort of meaningless labels and just focus on doing what I think is important. Like it I wanted to reduce climate impact and I was a bank, I would set up a page that lists all the ways I impact climate.

openrisk 2y ago

Brief background: the Net-Zero Banking Alliance launched in 2021 and by now it includes the majority of large European banks [1]. The departure of Morgan Stanley means they are now less than a handful US banks participating (notably sustainability oriented ones like Amalgamated and Climate First). [1] https://www.unepfi.org/net-zero-banking/members/ https://www.unepfi.org/net-zero-banking/members/

zelias 2y ago

I think it's a shame that ESG/DEI/etc all got lumped in together by the culture warriors on various ends of the spectrum. It makes logical sense that a business that acts responsibly vis-a-vis its environmental externalities would generate greater value in the long run (whether because they've avoided fines, or reduced the negative externalities, or whatever) [0]. I don't think we'd have as much of this climate backtracking if the "E" had been kept separate from the "S" and the "G". Unfortunately, now it's all been lumped together as part of the never ending culture war. Shame. [0] This doesn't speak to the problem of "greenwashing" investments, but that's a different thread imo.

no-dr-onboard 2y ago

It's almost as though companies should be most concerned with profit and not unproductive virtue based working groups that don't produce shareholder value /shrug.

poncho_romero 2y ago
won't you hippies shut up and think about the shareholders?
- no-dr-onboard 2y ago
  I'd be satisfied with just the first half of this sentence. What they think about the shareholders is entirely irrelevant. Let them do their thing while the company does their own. Distinct entities.
BobAliceInATree 2y ago
It's hard to make profits when you're underwater.
ericjmorey 2y ago
Discounting the economic benefits of social stability to the point where you don't expend any effort to mitigate resource wars isn't good business for banks.
NikolaNovak 2y ago
I found it fascinating recently (last few years) to try, myself, to consider and challenge that axiom/assumption. Analogy: though I've always been an atheist, the cultural conditioning is so strong, that in my 20's it took me a LOT of conscious effort to consider the notion that "Religion should not be treated specially" (when it comes to e.g. tax breaks, protection, freedom of speech, etc). On this too then, I've been strongly conditioned that "company's only prerogative is and should be shareholder value", that it took me a lot of effort to consider it critically, but... it's just a sentence, a statement. It's no more true than we desire it to be. Or to put it another way - if company's ONLY priority is shareholder value, over consumer interest, employee well-being, external impact, and long term picture... the system is as broken as the more aggressive amongst us have banged the drums it to be.

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

fancyfredbot 2y ago

https://archive.is/HxhvK https://archive.is/HxhvK

moominpapa 2y ago

[flagged]

netsharc 2y ago
You seem to be implying that this percentage is very low, so how could it be responsible for climate change? You seem to be doing the opposite of your question, knowing the answer to the question and then concluding (without knowledge of how the whole system works) that since it's so low that it couldn't be responsible for drastic changes.
- moominpapa 2y ago
  Yes, the implication is there and I am happy to be shown why CO2 is so key when man-made contributions to that tiny amount is so small also
  - netsharc 2y ago
    Aha... I like the confidence that "I'm right, all those climate scientists are swindlers", based on your knowledge that "0.04% is a very small number". True, you probably would not lose sleep after e.g. losing 0.04% of your investments, but I dare say, believing this translates to the area of climate change is an act of supreme ignorance. As for the rest of your stance, I asked ChatGPT: https://chatgpt.com/share/6776fe8b-8bd0-800e-875f-bae617ccfd18 https://chatgpt.com/share/6776fe8b-8bd0-800e-875f-bae617ccfd...
    - moominpapa 2y ago
      You appear to have created a straw man. Your prompt assumes I am a climate change denier, when it might have been better to have labelled me a man-made climate change skeptic. Not sure chatGPT is the way to go on this one as I'd imagine it will be weighted towards the consensus. There was once a consensus that the Earth was the centre of the Universe. Anyway thanks for the link, I enjoyed it.
      - 2y ago

dabaja 2y ago

Why am I not surprised? We’re starting 2025 just as we ended 2024—with masks dropping everywhere. From Big Oil slashing investments in green energy, to U.S. banks walking back on sustainability-linked loans, to the EU's push for an omnibus that could weaken already fragile regulations. And let’s not even get started on carbon markets turning into a growing scam. Maybe it’s a good thing? Clarity can be painful, but it’s better than living in illusions. Time to take the reins ourselves—invest consciously, act decisively, and demand accountability. This is my wish for all of us in 2025: that we see things as they are, not as we wish they were, and have the courage to drive the change we need. Apologies if this sounds overly philosophical—blame it on the rainy Brussels weather. It does things to a person!