Goldman Sachs Investors Are TreeHuggers
by John Laumer, Philadelphia on 04. 1.06
According to the Financial Times of April 1, 2006: "Goldman Sachs investors yesterday overwhelmingly voted down a unique shareholder proposal that claimed the Wall Street bank was misusing shareholder resources by pursuing an potentially expensive pro-environmental agenda. The proposal, submitted for consideration at Goldman's annual meeting by a small mutual fund firm called the Free Enterprise Action Fund, claimed that Hank Paulson had a conflict of interest in serving both as chief executive of Goldman and chairman of the Nature Conservancy, an environmental group". For background on this now-soundly defeated proposal...it melted down faster than a Greenland Glacier in 2050, with less than 0.01% shareholder support... see our earlier coverage here and also here. The Times reported that Steven Milloy, in representing the defeated FEAF proposal, criticised Goldman's donation of land to the Chilean wildlife conservation society (WCS) and also it's environmental policy which acknowledges the existence of global warming. Looks like there might soon be more targets for FAEF's brand of anti-TreeHugger shareholder activism.
john i've been meaning to say something to you about that for a few weeks now. no, not goldman sachs, but the "melting faster than a greenland glacier" thang.
everybody and their grandmother is now talking about those new ways to see how much ice is there and how fast its melting (the GRACE imaging....) you wrote about it so did world changing and even Time Magazine mentioned it. Especially the part about how the Greenland Sea Ice is melting at "twice the speed that it was previously melting"... which is not untrue.
But did anyone actually check out the full report? did anyone questions why they show that, while sea ice is melting away a) the glacier's net was a gain of 11 billion tons of ice? or for that matter how the peak height is now taller than it has been since we started observing?? no not really. These little facts might make it harder to sell global warming, but is exactly what people like George Kukula said would happen... same with the paleoclimatologists.
funny huh? that once we finally all agree that warming is happening, what with thr glacier buildup in thr previously desert northern greenland (you try snowing when its -50) and the gulf stream failing, we are actually going to enter a new climate regime that is MUCH COLDER than anyone thought...
(next time i see pundit write about how we can't tell if there is warming because "in the 70s the alarists were saying that theres an ice age coming. So really who can tell?" I'm going to kick his teeth out)
anyway yes that is off topic, but stull i thought you would like to know....(Im not making this up)
Very informative. Interesting.
Well, not all GS shareholders are treehuggers. I caught a story on NPR and the interviewee railed against the green proposal, saying GS was not allowed to have a social conscience if it in any way took money out of shareholder pockets (if I remember correctly). While it is, in fact, the law that a duty is owed first and foremost to shareholders, can't these people see the long-term good it will do--even for them?
===== author's response follows ====
You raise the most critical point. As with all market shifts of large scale technology change, there will be winners and there will be losers. Ban a pesticide for high hazard and a low hazard alternative becomes more profitable. Create demand for a lovely hybrid car and market interest slips faster away from SUV's. Clever and innovative businesses know how to innovate around this idea and get "first in" advantage. The less creative, slower ones focus on maintaining return on capital employed, fighting a rear guard battle which sometimes includes giving money to astroturf orgs. No matter how wonderful the new approaches will be, someone somewhere loses out.