It’s Getting Hot In Here

Al Gore keeps saying the most interesting things. I think he must read RAN’s website when surfing the internet late at night.

This week, speaking to financial leaders controlling $20 trillion in assets (yeah $20 TRILLION), Gore said “You need to really scrub your investment portfolios, because I guarantee you — as my longtime good redneck friends in Tennessee say, I guarandamntee you — that if you really take a fine-tooth comb and go through your portfolios, many of you are going to find them chock-full of subprime carbon assets.”

“Subprime carbon assets”, according to Gore, are the financial risks that investors in carbon intensive industry face when throwing billions into the fossil fuel infrastructure (ex:Citi and Bank of America). Gore compared carbon investments to subprime mortgages that has led to a recent meltdown in financial markets creating a credit crisis.

Both Citi and Bank of America have taken serious hits from the credit crisis and if they don’t change their lending to coal and oil in a meaningful way, they could take further hits.

Maybe they are smartening up. Look at some recent announcements coming off of Wall Street:

• In July 2007, Citi downgraded it’s coal company stocks. They were soon followed by Bank of America.
• In January 2008, Merrill Lynch downgraded it’s coal company stocks.
• Recently, Citi, JPMorgan Chase and Morgan Stanley announced the “Carbon Principles.” These are guidelines designed to scrutinize coal plant proposals more closely. They don’t go far enough, but Wall Street is letting us know that they are paying attention.
• Last week, Bank of America’s CEO, Ken Lewis, began talking about treating carbon as a liability.

We need to keep up the pressure on these institutions as they still have billions upon billions invested in coal and oil.

But global movements for climate justice and eco-sanity are definitely resonating with Corporate America and we have opportunities. After Katrina, the collapse of the Republican party and shifting political winds towards the left (and I am not talking JUST about Democrats and Election ‘08), it’s time to realize that an endgame for coal and other carbon intensive industry is achievable (i.e. it’s time to DREAM and BE BOLD, or better yet DEMAND THE IMPOSSIBLE!)

One other thing. While the climate justice and global warming movements are building momentum and Mr. Gore is scolding Wall St. for their portfolios, we should be wary of the power-holders offering us false solutions.

Nuclear power, carbon trading and carbon capture and storage (CCS) are amongst the false solutions that they will be throwing at us in the coming years. An industry front group, Americans for Balanced Energy Choices is already promoting “clean coal” and lots more greenwashing is headed our way as well.

We need to re-think our entire fossil fuel infrastructure and figure out how to uproot the system and build a better world. And not allow politicians and their corporate masters to once again put profit before people and the earth.

Mr. Gore may or may not be a leader in that, but millions of us are already part of the process.