“The super-rich are treating our planet like their personal playground, setting it ablaze for pleasure and profit. Their dirty investments and luxury toys —private jets and yachts— aren’t just symbols of excess; they’re a direct threat to people and the planet,” said Oxfam International Executive Director Amitabh Behar.
Including investments seems a bit disingenuous. I’m sure their personal carbon footprint is already huge without having to include that.
The power their money has when invested is far different than yours or mine. They could single handedly ensure certain companies do not fail, get specific contracts, bypass regulations and many other shady things.
Perhaps, but think of it this way: you likely have money invested or money that is invested on your behalf, whether that’s personal, 401k, IRA, or government pension. Those are likely investments spread across many companies - so should your carbon footprint take into account what those companies are doing?
I’d suggest that companies should be responsible for their carbon footprint, and legislated accordingly. Pushing it to investors, or on their customers, just seems like passing the buck.
I think people should have some responsibility for the emissions of their investments. If I’m exclusively investing in fossil fuel companies I’d be directly investing in emitting carbon. In the case of the billionaire class, some companies would have never attempted certain projects or even stayed in business without their billionaire supporters. They may have even been able to take losses and coast on investments while they grab their share of the market then shift to being more profitable.
The manipulation some billionaires do with their money is insane. Jeff Bezos managed to shuffle his assets and investments around just right one year that he was “poor enough” income wise to collect a tax benefit for his kid. We absolutely need to include investments when we are judging billionaires, it is often their investments that keep them rich, not some massive pile of cash or gold stashed away somewhere.
Not really, unless you directly purchase the shares, you get no proxy voting rights on corporate governance.
When you have an investment account, do you know who does take your money and hold the corporate governance rights? The fund managers.
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If you don’t include investment emissions, they’d emit more in 22 days than the average person does in their life.
Who should be responsible for the pollution of the investments if not the one profiting off them?
Yep, these companies wouldn’t stop existing if their shares were distributed evenly between people and the clients should be considered responsible for the emissions considering they’re the ones requesting the product.