this post was submitted on 13 Dec 2024
260 points (99.2% liked)
Climate - truthful information about climate, related activism and politics.
5376 readers
531 users here now
Discussion of climate, how it is changing, activism around that, the politics, and the energy systems change we need in order to stabilize things.
As a starting point, the burning of fossil fuels, and to a lesser extent deforestation and release of methane are responsible for the warming in recent decades:
How much each change to the atmosphere has warmed the world:
Recommended actions to cut greenhouse gas emissions in the near future:
Anti-science, inactivism, and unsupported conspiracy theories are not ok here.
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
The scary thing here is that the pledges came out of shareholder activism. If the corporation will not do what the shareholders ask of it, then who is calling the shots?
We often hear that CEOs have no choice but to put profits ahead of morals because they are obliged to deliver profits to the shareholders. We can see here, that they're prepared to act against the wishes of the shareholders, so that excuse is clearly untrue.
Mutual fund managers, especially of the big index funds at Vanguard, Blackrock, Schwab, Fidelity, etc. They get to vote all the shares of the working-class investors whose 401(k)s are invested in those funds, and I'm pretty sure they always vote for whatever management recommends as a matter of policy.
In other words, the thing that's supposed to be a check & balance against management fuckery... isn't.
i been sick of that "a ceo's only responsibility to shareholders" line. just like i been sick of people saying in america that corporations are legally required to maximize profits for the shareholders. this lets greedy oligarch fucks off the hook for their evils by portraying it as inevitable.
before reagan, one of the primary functions of government was holding greedy fucks accountable. reagan introduced alignment. from him on, government has been run by and for greedy oligarchs who just want to make themselves rich, everyone else, including the shareholders, be damned. our last chance to start reversing that process through elections was probably in 2000 when we didn't elect gore. we've been doomed ever since to someone like the next president.
we did elect gore, he didn't have the heart to fight for it