Hungary, Toxic Waste and Pension Funds

It's remarkably easy to conflate two issues, especially when the parallels are just so blindingly obvious.


On the one hand we have the chemical sludge which has erupted all over Hungary. This is (with no trace of irony) deep and serious doo-doo. It's not a minor little spill which will be cleared up as time goes by. It's a major ecological catastrophe which threatens to poison eastern and central European water supplies. In fact, it makes the Deepwater Horizon oil spill look like child's play.

However (just like Deepwater Horizon) there actually was nothing out of the ordinary in Hungary. All sorts of industrial plants have cess pools of toxic waste attached to them; in this case it was an aluminium plant but I remember an incident in Tennessee a few years back when a huge pile of ash from a coal fired power station burst its walls and flooded the neighbourhood. 

Looking at photos, the editor I covered the story for described the scene as Mordor, and he wasn't far wrong. ABC News in the US has done its bit to ram the message (or the paranoia) home. They've directed their readers to a map published by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) of all such cess pools across the US. "Heavens", you have to say, but there's a lot of them (pictured).

On the other hand, pension funds have suffered terribly during the financial downturn.

Last week, a widely reported study by the UN Principles for Responsible Investment (UNPRI) found that the ecological damage of all human activity in 2008 was worth $6.6tr, 20% larger than the $5.4tr decline in pension funds' value in the same period (during that financial crisis).

Pension funds act as aggregators of capitalist investment and there's a creditable argument that modern day capitalism wouldn't exist without them. Yet they have, by the nature of the beast, to have to take on risks and corral those risks into a holding area where they can be managed... Read more

Oil & Gas Firms Spend Millions on California's 'Prop 23': 80 Percent of S&P 500 Don't Disclose Political Spending

When a business faces new regulations, is shareholder capital best spent on complying with the rules, or on lobbying to overturn them? How companies answer this question will be of growing concern for investors in coming years.

On Wednesday, the Los Angeles Times reported on a shareholder campaign targeting three large oil and gas companies for their spending on an effort to overturn California’s greenhouse gas (GHG) regulations. The ballot initiative, called “Proposition 23,” would delay or prevent implementation of the 2006 Global Warming Solutions Act, known as “AB32.”
The fight over Prop 23 highlights two related issues. First, corporations’ political spending – now explicitly protected speech after the Supreme Court's 2010 Citizens United ruling – could give them more influence over laws and regulations that involve their businesses. And second, the oil and gas sector is only the first whose competitive landscape could be redrawn by GHG restrictions, such as the low-carbon fuel standards of AB32.   Read more

Offshore Wind a U.S. Job Boon if Capital Costs Don't Erode Potential -- DOE

If politics and economics align, the United States is well-positioned to build massive wind farms off of U.S. coasts and in the Great Lakes to meet a substantial amount of the nation's electricity needs, according to the Department of Energy.

In a 240-page study (pdf) of the potential and barriers for building 54 gigawatts' worth of offshore wind capacity, DOE's National Renewable Energy Laboratory estimates that doing so means the creation of at least 43,000 permanent jobs. Potential exists for $200 billion in economic activity, and government analysts predict 20 jobs would be created for every megawatt produced off of U.S. shores.
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Green Startups: "Trapped in the Valley of Death"

Hundreds of U.S. cleantech startups find themselves stuck on the road to serious revenues because of the toxic combination of a stalled economy, scarce funding, and Washington's failure to enact comprehensive climate and energy legislation. The market for initial public offerings is frozen and venture capital is drying up because of uncertainty.
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How best to accomplish a foundation’s mission? Passive investment vs. shareholder activism

Bill and Melinda Gates may not be that unusual after all—at least when it comes to the investment policies of their eponymous foundation. The Gates Foundation is the largest in the world, with an endowment larger than the gross domestic products of 70 percent of the world’s nations.

Amidst general praise for its work on social issues, the foundation found itself in the spotlight in January following the publication of a two-part Los Angeles Times investigation, which claimed that hundreds of Gates Foundation investments have been in companies that “contribute to the problems of health, housing and social welfare that the foundation tries to solve.”  Read more

Sustainable Investing to be well represented at Green Business Works EXPO - October 26-28 Atlanta, GA

Investors will soon have a unique opportunity to hear from leading Sustainable Investing practioners.  The Green Business Works EXPO will be held at the Cobb Galeria Centre from October 26-28.  The three-day program is packed with presentations and breakout sessions hosted by real sustainability professionals, corporate leaders and consultants. 

For investors, however the highlights include presentations by key individuals on the forefront of sustainable investing:
   John Segrich, Head of Green Research and Portfolio Manager --Gabelli Asset Management
   Michael Muyot, Investment Analyst -- CRD Analytics
   Alya Z. Kayal, Vice President, Sustainability Research - Calvert Funds (Keynote Luncheon October 28th)

For more information, visit http://GreenBusinessWorksExpo.net/

Hope to see you there.

P&G to take sustainability message to brand campaigns

Procter & Gamble is well known for its leadership in many consumer products categories. The company is also recognized as a leader in sustainablility, appearing in numerous investment indexes that track the nation's most sustainble firms. Now, P&G has further declared its intention to reduce waste, energy consumption and emissions. In partnership with WWF, P&G has pledged to reduce its use of petroleum-derived materials by 25%, reduce its packaging by 20% and ensure 30% of the power in its operations is sourced from renewable energy by 2020.

The new commitments will also be communicated to consumers through P&G’s existing consumer-facing initiative Future Friendly, which aims to educate consumers on how they can reduce waste and save energy and water.  Company President and CEO Bob McDonald says: “No one company can have all the answers but we recognise that we need to be part of the solution.”

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Ethical investment funds come of age, and performance

In a recent interview, Sebastian Beloe, head of Sustainable and Responsible Investment (SRI) research at Henderson Funds shares his views on the evolution of SRI funds, investment themes that he finds attractive and how sustainable funds fared in the post-crisis environment.

On the evolution of sustainable mutual funds:  "In the old days, SRI was about what you could not invest in - like tobacco. The whole thing has become inverted and now it is about all the areas you can invest in, should invest in. Our whole proposition is that these markets are handsomely placed to grow, make money for investors, and that if you care about the fact that it is an environmental technology then fine, but if you do not, then that is fine as well.

"I personally do not want to invest in anything to do with tobacco or gambling - my personal ethics if you like - but the fact that we have SRI funds that outperform, that are in the top or second quartile over five years and which do not invest in these areas is a win-win situation. The question you should ask is, why wouldn't you want to invest in such funds?"  Click here to read the full article at mindful money.com