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Replies to post #2434 on Peabody Energy Corporation (BTU)
12/04/20 3:24 PM
Rockefeller? What's he got to do with the discussion?
Rockefeller Brothers Fund: it is our moral duty to divest from fossil fuels
On a perfect summer day in June 2014, on the grounds of a stately home overlooking the Hudson river, a handful of the descendants of America’s most enduring business dynasty made a fateful decision: they would cut their ties to fossil fuels in order to fight climate change.
The ironies were inescapable. About half of those gathered for the board meeting were direct descendants of John D Rockefeller – founder of the oil empire that eventually became ExxonMobil – and here they were, gathered in the estate he built at Pocantico Hills, New York, surrounded by a collection of antique gas guzzlers and limousines, preparing to take a highly symbolic stand against fossil fuels.
As descendants, they had an extra burden to fight climate change, said Valerie Rockefeller Wayne, a former middle-school special education teacher and chair of the Rockefeller Brothers Fund (RBF).
“We all have a moral obligation,” she told the Guardian. “Our family in particular – the money that is for our grant-making, and what we are doing now, and that helps fund our lifestyles came from dirty fuel sources.”
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On a day when more than 800 institutions and individual investors, controlling more than $50bn (£34bn) in assets, committed to divest, the Rockefellers were the marquee name – delivering a jolt of energy to the fossil fuel divestment movement that had been steadily expanding from college campuses to philanthropies and pension funds.
“I think it was one of the most important moments in the whole divestment campaign just because of the symbolism that is attached to the original fossil fuel fortune,” said Bill McKibben, the writer and activist who helped launch the divestment movement.
