Please forgive me for this off-topic post. I don't have an email address for you.
Have you looked into the recently booming DAC "industry"? That's Direct Air Capture -- of atmospheric carbon. It's booming, and yet I'm not finding any in depth investigative reporting on it. Maybe you're the one to do that reporting? Or maybe you know someone, or several someones, to take it on? But the world is in need of it now, for sure! See: https://www.foodandwaterwatch.org/2023/01/19/direct-air-capture-climate-scam/
I think this has been covered in some major outlets in the UK (especially as a contract was granted to a Tory pal). Hard to know when you're in your bubble—I'm always amazed when I come across someone who isn't aware of the crises!
Hmm. I don't have special, magical secondary research powers, and I've done a bunch of google (etc.) searches using various terms, and have found very little in-depth reporting on DAC -- which is really an understatement. Which major UK outlets? Do you have any links?
It's EASY to find non-critical articles in news media on DAC, but those are of no interest to me. I'm looking for exposes which reveal the fact that there is something sneaky and underhanded going on with DAC. Food & Water Watch has a nice intro to the topic, but I want to see some in-depth investigative journalism on it.
I would think it just and fair, if the commons just walked in and took back what the corporations, the elites and their cronies stole. Why pay them out with yet more money, seems weird?
The laws, written by those with power and wealth, won't be changed for the benefit of the many at the expense of the few.
I'm a bit surprised by this perspective and wonder if it is mainly a particularly US-American perspective. In Europe, pensions are still largely (unfortunately not exclusively) public, and pension funds play a much smaller role. In addition, a currency-sovereign government (such as the US federal government) could just create the funds necessary to buy out fossil fuel companies, and then do with them whatever they like, without any concerns about returns.
So why instead choose such a roundabout way? Because it is politically more likely than actually going through parliament and the executive? Especially if the change is implemented via a bill, I don't really see this.
In any case, really appreciate the podcast, keep up the good work.
In the short term, a pension fund can either make a profit on fossil-fuel companies or shut them down. You can't have both. And you cannot transition an oil rig into solar panels, or a pipeline into affordable housing. In the midium term the economy will break down because of environmental degradation, lack of minerals / metals and the break-up of production- and supply chains. Our pension funds loosing most of their assets is inevitable, and the least concerning issue in a situation of societal breakdown and mass starvation.
The key to this is a technical answer to the technical question: What POWERS do pensions actually possess for deploying the tens of trillions, collectively, worldwide, that society is entrusting to their prudence and loyalty, true to their purpose and duty?
It might be a lot to expect everyday People Who Care to wrestle with these technical questions of POWER to deploy. That brings us to this learning from Keith Johnson, "...the investment professionals have basically pushed out the attorneys from interpreting fiduciary duty".
Maybe it's time that the attorneys, who can wrestle with the technicalities of power - that, after all, is our actual job, push back in, and take control over interpreting the law back from the vested interests of corporate finance professionals (who style themselves as "investment" professionals in order to close off any consideration that there just might be an Untaken Safer Alternative), to properly articulate the powers that pensions actually possess, and can and should be using.
Maybe we can mobilize People Who Care to call on the legal profession to stop sitting on the sidelines, like it's not our job, and get back into the fight, to fight for what is right, and not just to perpetuate the status quo of business as usual, no matter how bad that status quo is making things.
Maybe campaign organizers like XR can organize such calls for lawyers to interpret the law.
Rachel Donald -
Please forgive me for this off-topic post. I don't have an email address for you.
Have you looked into the recently booming DAC "industry"? That's Direct Air Capture -- of atmospheric carbon. It's booming, and yet I'm not finding any in depth investigative reporting on it. Maybe you're the one to do that reporting? Or maybe you know someone, or several someones, to take it on? But the world is in need of it now, for sure! See: https://www.foodandwaterwatch.org/2023/01/19/direct-air-capture-climate-scam/
I think this has been covered in some major outlets in the UK (especially as a contract was granted to a Tory pal). Hard to know when you're in your bubble—I'm always amazed when I come across someone who isn't aware of the crises!
Hmm. I don't have special, magical secondary research powers, and I've done a bunch of google (etc.) searches using various terms, and have found very little in-depth reporting on DAC -- which is really an understatement. Which major UK outlets? Do you have any links?
It's EASY to find non-critical articles in news media on DAC, but those are of no interest to me. I'm looking for exposes which reveal the fact that there is something sneaky and underhanded going on with DAC. Food & Water Watch has a nice intro to the topic, but I want to see some in-depth investigative journalism on it.
I would think it just and fair, if the commons just walked in and took back what the corporations, the elites and their cronies stole. Why pay them out with yet more money, seems weird?
The laws, written by those with power and wealth, won't be changed for the benefit of the many at the expense of the few.
I'm a bit surprised by this perspective and wonder if it is mainly a particularly US-American perspective. In Europe, pensions are still largely (unfortunately not exclusively) public, and pension funds play a much smaller role. In addition, a currency-sovereign government (such as the US federal government) could just create the funds necessary to buy out fossil fuel companies, and then do with them whatever they like, without any concerns about returns.
So why instead choose such a roundabout way? Because it is politically more likely than actually going through parliament and the executive? Especially if the change is implemented via a bill, I don't really see this.
In any case, really appreciate the podcast, keep up the good work.
In the short term, a pension fund can either make a profit on fossil-fuel companies or shut them down. You can't have both. And you cannot transition an oil rig into solar panels, or a pipeline into affordable housing. In the midium term the economy will break down because of environmental degradation, lack of minerals / metals and the break-up of production- and supply chains. Our pension funds loosing most of their assets is inevitable, and the least concerning issue in a situation of societal breakdown and mass starvation.
The key to this is a technical answer to the technical question: What POWERS do pensions actually possess for deploying the tens of trillions, collectively, worldwide, that society is entrusting to their prudence and loyalty, true to their purpose and duty?
It might be a lot to expect everyday People Who Care to wrestle with these technical questions of POWER to deploy. That brings us to this learning from Keith Johnson, "...the investment professionals have basically pushed out the attorneys from interpreting fiduciary duty".
Maybe it's time that the attorneys, who can wrestle with the technicalities of power - that, after all, is our actual job, push back in, and take control over interpreting the law back from the vested interests of corporate finance professionals (who style themselves as "investment" professionals in order to close off any consideration that there just might be an Untaken Safer Alternative), to properly articulate the powers that pensions actually possess, and can and should be using.
Maybe we can mobilize People Who Care to call on the legal profession to stop sitting on the sidelines, like it's not our job, and get back into the fight, to fight for what is right, and not just to perpetuate the status quo of business as usual, no matter how bad that status quo is making things.
Maybe campaign organizers like XR can organize such calls for lawyers to interpret the law.