A problem with conspiracy theories—aside from the fact that they always get around to involving “
the Jews”—is that they distract us from what’s happening in plain sight.
So, in case you missed it, here’s the biggest thing that happened in the world last week: While our planet was experiencing its
hottest month of all time, the Earth’s biggest pile of cash (the asset manager BlackRock, with $8.59 trillion dollars under management) named to its board of directors the CEO of the world’s largest oil company, Saudi Aramco, which has produced more carbon emissions than any firm on earth.
This decision was barely even noted—
The New York Times produced a nine-paragraph account in its Dealbook newsletter. And yet think of what it means. It is the ultimate signal that the world’s financial community has decided to essentially give up on even the modest commitments they made a couple of years ago in Glasgow, where they said they would work to decarbonize their portfolios.
It’s gross when the PGA does business with the murderous Saudi regime; it’s life-or-death for everyone when the biggest business in the world sucks up to the biggest oil company.
Two things have happened since they made those big pledges (BlackRock’s Larry Fink said at the time, “We are on the edge of a fundamental reshaping of finance” to deal with the climate crisis). First, the war in Ukraine produced huge profits for the oil industry, as their old pal Vladimir Putin (who once hung a medal around the neck of Exxon’s CEO) pushed the price of petroleum into the stratosphere. And second, the oil industry’s bought-and-paid-for politicians in red-state America wrote nasty letters about “ESG investing” and threatened to break ties with the Wall Street firms that were “going woke.” Those two developments were more than enough to persuade barons like Fink to walk back their professed concern with a planet on fire. He is clearly a go-along get-along guy, and where we’re going is—well, if not hell then someplace with a similar temperature. (So far
seven people have died and 85 have been hospitalized in Phoenix simply from burns from touching the pavement). It’s gross when the PGA does business with the murderous Saudi regime; it’s life-or-death for everyone when the biggest business in the world sucks up to the biggest oil company.
So what does stand-up leadership look like? Here’s Brad Lander, the comptroller of New York City. It’s not a sexy job (not like, say, running for president as your first public office). He’s the money guy, balancing the city’s books. But New York City has a lot of money, and that money gives you the power to do useful things that help people. When it got unbearably hot, Lander put out a video pointing out that the big banks the city does business with were still bankrolling the fossil fuel industry. It is straightforward, powerful, plainspoken:
And a few days later, when the Saudi Aramco news came out, Lander was again just about the only public servant I saw react:
“BlackRock has clearly stated that climate risk is an investment risk, but actions speak louder than words,” New York City Comptroller Brad Lander said in an emailed statement.
“At a time when financial institutions need to take a collective approach to addressing the financial risks from climate change, BlackRock shareholders expect climate-competent, not climate-conflicted, directors.”
This matters. BlackRock is the largest external money manager for the city of New York. Lander can move that business and it will hurt BlackRock; and his words will at least be heard in the din of Wall Street. Others are starting to figure out just how irredeemable the fossil fuel industry is. Here, for instance, is an editorial in the
Los Angeles Times last week that I think is the most forthright declaration ever on Big Oil by a major American newspaper. Forget pretending that the Exxons and Aramcos will ever change their stripes: instead, “kick them to the curb.” I’m going to quote from it at length because the paper’s editorial board was not engaging in the usual tentative to-ing and fro-ing. They just said it:
It should be obvious by now that fossil fuel companies have no real plans to change in response to the climate crisis. And that the only way forward is without them.
Some high-profile environmental leaders have come to a similar conclusion recently, among them influential climate negotiator Christiana Figueres, under whose tenure as executive secretary of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change the landmark 2015 Paris agreement was developed.
She wrote in Al Jazeera earlier this month that after years of holding out hope that oil and gas companies would wake up and participate in the decarbonization of the economy, their actions over the last 12 months have changed her mind.
Former Vice President Al Gore, a longtime champion for climate action, has also been speaking
with refreshing frankness about fossil fuel industry obstruction, decrying “anti-climate plotting” by companies that refuse to disclose their emissions or commit to phasing them out while they successfully push government policies to slow down the transition to clean energy.
It’s
a little late for powerful voices from older generations to come to the realization that fossil fuel companies aren’t operating in good faith and will fight climate action until the bitter end. But it’s welcome nonetheless, and there’s clear generational shift in that direction that offers some hope. Polling last year by the Pew Research Center found that while most Americans are reluctant to ditch fossil fuels, younger adults are much more supportive of phasing out oil, gas, and coal entirely.
This is the spirit that we desperately need—the spirit that focuses on the actual, the concrete, the things before our eyes. Like the unbearable heat. Not long before his assassination, Robert F. Kennedy gave a speech at the University of Kansas where he spoke about the real with as much eloquence as any American ever mustered. There was a man who could have been forgiven a conspiracy theory or two—after all, his brother had been killed just five years before. But here’s where he was focused:
Our Gross National Product, now, is over $800 billion dollars a year, but that Gross National Product—if we judge the United States of America by that—that Gross National Product counts air pollution and cigarette advertising, and ambulances to clear our highways of carnage. It counts special locks for our doors and the jails for the people who break them. It counts the destruction of the redwood and the loss of our natural wonder in chaotic sprawl. It counts napalm and counts nuclear warheads and armored cars for the police to fight the riots in our cities. It counts Whitman's rifle and Speck's knife, and the television programs which glorify violence in order to sell toys to our children. Yet the gross national product does not allow for the health of our children, the quality of their education, or the joy of their play. It does not include the beauty of our poetry or the strength of our marriages, the intelligence of our public debate or the integrity of our public officials. It measures neither our wit nor our courage, neither our wisdom nor our learning, neither our compassion nor our devotion to our country, it measures everything in short, except that which makes life worthwhile. And it can tell us everything about America except why we are proud that we are Americans.
Brad Lander, born the next year, is heir to that tradition, and so are the editorialists of the
Los Angeles Times, and so are all the other Americans who keep their eye on the moment.
