Excerpts:
UNITED NATIONS (AP) — Al Gore advised Wall Street leaders and institutional investors Thursday to ditch businesses too reliant on carbon-intensive energy — or prepare for huge losses down the road.
"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," the former vice president said.
Carbon dioxide from burning fossil fuels is the leading component of "greenhouse gases," which scientists say are playing a key role in warming the globe.
Gore's remarks before a high-profile business crowd that collectively controls some $20 trillion in capital were intended to unleash a financial ripple effect that could force the world to start putting a price on carbon emissions.
Gore, who shared the Nobel Peace Prize for his efforts to warn about climate change, compared the financial risks facing investors in carbon-using industries with the meltdown in the market for subprime mortgages given to people with blemished credit records or low incomes.
"Similarly, the assumption that you can safely invest in assets that come from business models that assume carbon is free is an assumption that is about to go splat," he said. "You have lots of assets, many of you do, in your portfolios right now that truly do deserve that epithet 'subprime.'"
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Fifty U.S. and European institutional investors managing $1.75 trillion in assets agreed to invest $10 billion more in energy efficiency and "clean energy" technologies over the next two years and to aim for a 20 percent reduction in energy from core real estate investment holdings over three years. California State Treasurer Bill Lockyer said his state's leading pension funds would invest more than $800 million in environmental technology with similar aims.
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"Fifty U.S. and European institutional investors managing $1.75 trillion in assets agreed to invest $10 billion more in energy efficiency and 'clean energy' technologies over the next two years and to aim for a 20 percent reduction in energy from core real estate investment holdings over three years."
So only 50 institutional investors from various countries are willing to jump on board? And they are only willing to invest 10 of their 1750 billion in assets in this idea? That is less than 0.57% of the total they manage. They don't sound too convinced to me.
Just out of curiosity, I wonder if you compare the trillions that all institutional investors in the USA and Europe manage to that measley 10 billion, will you even get 0.0380% which is the percent of the atmosphere that is CO2.
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