this post was submitted on 27 Nov 2024
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Climate - truthful information about climate, related activism and politics.

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Discussion of climate, how it is changing, activism around that, the politics, and the energy systems change we need in order to stabilize things.

As a starting point, the burning of fossil fuels, and to a lesser extent deforestation and release of methane are responsible for the warming in recent decades: Graph of temperature as observed with significant warming, and simulated without added greenhouse gases and other anthropogentic changes, which shows no significant warming

How much each change to the atmosphere has warmed the world: IPCC AR6 Figure 2 - Thee bar charts: first chart: how much each gas has warmed the world. About 1C of total warming. Second chart: about 1.5C of total warming from well-mixed greenhouse gases, offset by 0.4C of cooling from aerosols and negligible influence from changes to solar output, volcanoes, and internal variability. Third chart: about 1.25C of warming from CO2, 0.5C from methane, and a bunch more in small quantities from other gases. About 0.5C of cooling with large error bars from SO2.

Recommended actions to cut greenhouse gas emissions in the near future:

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How I Can Green Up My Investments | It’s not that hard, and there’s a bonus: Portfolios without fossil fuels have generally performed just as well as the broader market. (www.nytimes.com)
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[–] Steve@communick.news 0 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (5 children)

DISCLAMER

Owning fossil fuel stock as part of a broad index fund isn't an "endorsement". Not owning fossil fuel stocks does nothing to hurt fossil companies. They made their money from the stock in the IPO. Any trading afterwards doesn't effect their bottom line at all.

Even if they have similar performance, the eco-friendly funds charge you much more every year. The article mentions VTSAX (Vanguards total stock market index) fund. It has an expense ratio of 0.04%. That's how much they charge you each year to own it. AMAGX (Amana Growth Investor) fund on the other hand has an expense ratio of 0.87%. They charge you more than 20x as much; Which more than erases the slightly better performance they've had.

If it helps you sleep at night, that's fine. That's great! It's well worth it for that alone. But don't for a moment think this is helping the environment at all. The only functional outcome it will have is putting a 0.5% or more drag on your portfolio.

[–] MrMakabar@slrpnk.net 3 points 20 hours ago

It actually does hurt them though. First of all companies offer shares after IPOs all the time. Things like stock options for employees and acquisitions with new stock are common. High share prices help a company that way. Then the next part is lending. Companies with high values get better lending options from banks and the market in form of bonds. This is already a problem for them in Europe, which has a lot of ESG. It is not going to kill them, but it will make life harder for them.

[–] ProdigalFrog@slrpnk.net 5 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

There's Vanguard's passive ESG index fund, ESGV, which while not perfect, does eliminate 99% of fossil fuel investments according to fossilfreefunds.org, while only having an expense ratio of 0.09%

[–] silence7@slrpnk.net 6 points 1 day ago (1 children)

You've gone from a passive fund to an active fund there I think, with the associated far higher expenses. You can get close to divested from the fossil fuels industry via the Vanguard FTSE Social Index Fund would get you an expense ratio of 0.14%, which is about where index funds were charging when they didn't have the same economies of scale they do today.

[–] Steve@communick.news 2 points 1 day ago

True. That was just the first fund (That doesn't require 100K) on the first link in the article.

[–] paysrenttobirds@sh.itjust.works 4 points 1 day ago

Any trading afterwards doesn't effect their bottom line at all.

I'm no expert, but I think this really depends on the company. They often retain a significant percent of shares, and once public they are governed by a board of shareholders who can and do direct policy with the company. Not to mention a widely held belief that public companies are legally bound to protect their stock price, which affects decision-making throughout the company.

[–] RvTV95XBeo@sh.itjust.works 1 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Hey Siri, what are stock buybacks and how do they help a company profit off of increases in stock price?

[–] Steve@communick.news 1 points 1 day ago

I don't do Apple unless I'm paid to. What did she say?