Morgan Stanley Latest Major US Bank To Desert Global Climate Alliance (thehill.com)
- Reference: 0175818217
- News link: https://news.slashdot.org/story/25/01/02/1841216/morgan-stanley-latest-major-us-bank-to-desert-global-climate-alliance
- Source link: https://thehill.com/policy/energy-environment/5063492-morgan-stanley-exits-net-zero-coalition/
While maintaining its commitment to net-zero goals and 2030 emissions targets, Morgan Stanley joins a broader retreat from environmental initiatives by financial institutions. The bank's exit from the alliance, established in 2021 to reduce lending-related emissions, comes amid mounting Republican scrutiny of Wall Street's climate policies and legal challenges from state attorneys general targeting financial firms' environmental stances.
[1] https://thehill.com/policy/energy-environment/5063492-morgan-stanley-exits-net-zero-coalition/
Ok...so.... (Score:2)
> established in 2021 to reduce lending-related emissions
Ok, so what exactly are "lending-related emissions"?
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Have you seen the amount of paperwork the lending industry creates? Physical paperwork, not the electronic kind.
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See my reply below - it's not paperwork etc.
This is pretty nefarious. Let's say single family homes generate more emissions than apartment buildings. I don't know if that's true but assuming economies of scale and effieciency work on buildings, it probably is true that apartment complexes generate less emissions per resident than a single family home
The result is that someone, somewhere is actively encouraging people to not buy single family homes. That's kinda evil. You want to stop pollution? T
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> Stopping people from buying certain types of property under the guise of "reducing emissions" should have everyone worried.
Why?
You can't buy functional fighter jets under the guise of national security.
You can't own land in Antarctica.
I'm not arguing whether the emissions argument is correct or not, I'm just saying that what can be bought is a social contract, open to renegotiation once in a while.
For instance the EU's USB-C charging mandate. That was a wild negotiation.
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> See my reply below - it's not paperwork etc.
> This is pretty nefarious. Let's say single family homes generate more emissions than apartment buildings. I don't know if that's true but assuming economies of scale and effieciency work on buildings, it probably is true that apartment complexes generate less emissions per resident than a single family home
> The result is that someone, somewhere is actively encouraging people to not buy single family homes. That's kinda evil. You want to stop pollution? Take a look at the horrific emissions coming from India and China. Stopping people from buying certain types of property under the guise of "reducing emissions" should have everyone worried.
I'd be worried if banks weren't calculating and pricing known risks. The risk here being 2050 net zero [1]https://www.unepfi.org/net-zer... [unepfi.org] I wouldn't assume charitable contributions from for profit companies.
[1] https://www.unepfi.org/net-zero-banking/commitment/
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According to one statement I found,
"Most of our lending-related emissions can be attributed to fossil gas use from the buildings and homes we finance"
Which is just plain weird terminology that makes me very suspicious. So you provide finance for a home and that home generates 10kg of CO2 a year and somehow that makes you responsible for that emission? Because you provided the mortgage?
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That really is a weird way of calculating it. Of course the family living there generates those 10kg as well, both as a household and individually, and the power company generates those 10kg as well, and the water company, and so on. It makes it really hard to generate some solid numbers of how much CO2 is generated in total if the same 10kg are attributed to a number of different actors instead of being split out between them.
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> That really is a weird way of calculating it. Of course the family living there generates those 10kg as well, both as a household and individually, and the power company generates those 10kg as well, and the water company, and so on. It makes it really hard to generate some solid numbers of how much CO2 is generated in total if the same 10kg are attributed to a number of different actors instead of being split out between them.
I don't think it's some benevolent endeavour by the companies to calculate all emissions but those that put them at risk. The underlying assumption being that emissions will be priced differently in the future and affect the value of the buildings that secures the mortgages.
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> According to one statement I found,
> "Most of our lending-related emissions can be attributed to fossil gas use from the buildings and homes we finance"
> Which is just plain weird terminology that makes me very suspicious. So you provide finance for a home and that home generates 10kg of CO2 a year and somehow that makes you responsible for that emission? Because you provided the mortgage?
If you want your money back from a mortgage on a building decades from now, how much co2 that building generates seems to me like a reasonable datapoint to take into consideration.
I know we shouldn't be surprised but... (Score:4, Insightful)
How much of this was virtue signalling by corporations because of the political leanings of the then ruling party? We're seeing roll backs for DEI, Climate etc. on a pretty large scale so this just means the corporations didn't really buy into that - they were just doing it for the optics. I know, I know, color us all shocked right?
Unlike the first poster, I don't think the right answer is to punish states depending on what way they vote. First of all, there are millions of people in a state that voted differently. You can't just lump people together like that. Second, the answer is education and knowledge. If you voted for someone because of the way they look or sound, you need more education and knowledge.
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Good luck educating the red states. Look up "cancer alley" in Louisiana. The red states are so "pro-business" that they will go so far as to shut down the Tulane University Law School program that documented the excesses of the chemical industry.
It is the red states who pride themselves in being "different". The first poster was merely honoring the distinction they make.
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My point is that a state might have 20 million people in it. That's 20 million opinions and at least a few hundred thousand unique political views. Punishing 100% of the population for the opinions of maybe 30% of the population seems kinda extraordinary.
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The US has about 170 million females, how about them? Trump got less than 80 million votes out of about 335 million total population. It seems "kinda extraordinary" that the country lose abortion rights that of the public support or that the country be subject to an administration headed by a life-long criminal that was on a track to imprisonment, yet here we are. At least in red states, it would be a minority being subject to majority policies, if even that is true. Not true in my state, which is red.
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All of it was virtue signaling to those in power. As soon as Trump won, they dropped it all like a hot potato. The next time a Democrat wins, they'll all be back in board.
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It would be nice if we all collectively agreed that corporations are not people and therefore don't have beliefs and values. They exist only to generate profits so the next time tries to get on social soapbox, we should just gently help them get down and remind them they're not people. They should refocus on creating a good product and lowering costs.
Leave the caring to people.
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> It would be nice if we all collectively agreed that corporations are not people and therefore don't have beliefs and values. They exist only to generate profits so the next time tries to get on social soapbox, we should just gently help them get down and remind them they're not people. They should refocus on creating a good product and lowering costs. Leave the caring to people.
You mean they should be regulated instead of relying on them to voluntarily consider anything other than profit? Regulation is unlikely to best protect their profits. The best way to protect their profits is to convince people regulation is bad and unnecessary. That means getting on the soapbox whenever their profits/stock price are threatened to convince people they are already doing the right thing. This stuff is all public relations designed to enhance their financial value.
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It's all about mergers and acquisitions. As in, those large corporations with all those big profits have acquired congress, the courts, and the White House. It's too late for the little voters to object.
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The charcuterie board?
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"How much of this was virtue signalling..."
All of it. And this decision is just complying in advance.
"Unlike the first poster, I don't think the right answer is to punish states depending on what way they vote."
He didn't say punish anyone, he said let them suffer the consequences of the policies they support.
"First of all, there are millions of people in a state that voted differently."
Yep, but the country will now get policies that millions don't want, like an abortion ban. People need to suffer conseque
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And in turn, backing out is also "virtue signalling". They're signalling to the Trump administration to "please don't send the DOJ after us" and "we love pollution, just like you!" In other words, virtue signalling goes both ways, and it's usually because they have fewer balls than a steer.
Especially when someone is very clearly trying to be a "king maker" and single handedly has near total control over a political party, then sucking up and virtue signalling is a decent survival mechanism for those witho
Republicans are not conservatives (Score:4, Insightful)
By far the greatest pillar of what is considered conservative thought is that the government stays out of how businesses choose to run themselves. Trumpists have obliterated that pillar. DEI was not a legal mandate. It was part of the zeitgeist that grew out of the many instances of how a lack of diversity leads to discrimination best exemplified by the FBI's report on the Fergusion, MO, police department: [1]https://www.justice.gov/sites/... [justice.gov]
Corporations adopted DEI because it was good for business. At the very least, it was good PR. They are dropping DEI because they fear repercussions, not because of PR. The Republican Party is no longer conservative by any stretch of the definition of the term.
[1] https://www.justice.gov/sites/default/files/opa/press-releases/attachments/2015/03/04/ferguson_police_department_report.pdf
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The political definition of 'conservative' has a whole bunch of aspects that don't really belong with the term, but you know it when you see it.
It's basically fascism-lite that will tend towards full on fascism.
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Fascism (nominal private ownership of the means of production but de-facto pervasive government control) is the antithesis of actual conservatism.
With 'conservatism' as currently politically defined, it's anything goes. It's basically a catch-all for anything liberals don't like.
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Fascism: "Everything in the State, nothing outside the State, nothing against the State."
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I thought that the greatest pillar of conservative thought is [1]the love of freedom! [salon.com]
[1] https://www.salon.com/2017/07/09/conservatives-claim-to-love-freedom-but-the-historical-record-and-the-evidence-suggest-otherwise/
Re:Republicans are not conservatives (Score:4, Funny)
> I thought that the greatest pillar of conservative thought is [1]the love of freedom! [salon.com]
You misspelled 'freedumb!'.
[1] https://www.salon.com/2017/07/09/conservatives-claim-to-love-freedom-but-the-historical-record-and-the-evidence-suggest-otherwise/
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Freedom for me but not for thee.
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> By far the greatest pillar of what is considered conservative thought is that the government stays out of how businesses choose to run themselves. Trumpists have obliterated that pillar. DEI was not a legal mandate. It was part of the zeitgeist that grew out of the many instances of how a lack of diversity leads to discrimination best exemplified by the FBI's report on the Fergusion, MO, police department: [1]https://www.justice.gov/sites/... [justice.gov] Corporations adopted DEI because it was good for business. At the very least, it was good PR. They are dropping DEI because they fear repercussions, not because of PR. The Republican Party is no longer conservative by any stretch of the definition of the term.
I disagree. first of DEI is NOT good for business, it is ONLY good for PR, and only then when the winds are blowing left. Now that they're not, they're dropping it.
And let me be clear about one thing: diversity, diversity of thought, can actually be good for generative businesses, but DEI wasn't about diversity of thought. It was about uniformity of thought from diverse skin colors and sexualities.
[1] https://www.justice.gov/sites/default/files/opa/press-releases/attachments/2015/03/04/ferguson_police_department_report.pdf
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And, exactly how is the diversity of thought present in a boardroom full of white dudes who went to the same type of elite school?
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Not just the board room, that style is all over the place in modern corporations. A startup very often has a lot of early employees coming from the ranks of friends and friends of friends, and I indeed see utter morons in charge of important stuff and wonder how such a moron got such a high position, only to learn he was in the same party frat as an executive. Everyone who thinks their company only hires on the basis of merit is naive and blind.
Even that elite ivy league school graduates a lot of really st
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I disagree. first of DEI is NOT good for business, it is ONLY good for PR, and only then when the winds are blowing left. Now that they're not, they're dropping it.
Except Costco. They've told Republicans and anyone else who disagrees with the tenet of DEI, including their shareholders, [1]it's non-negotiable [forbes.com].
[1] https://www.forbes.com/sites/simonemorris/2024/12/28/costco-to-shareholders-dei-and-inclusive-leadership-is-non-negotiable/
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> Corporations adopted DEI because it was good for business.
Yep...hire based on sex, race, gender ID....(except for straight white males)....rather than ability or merit.
What could possibly go wrong?
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The assumption about ability is just an assumption, not anything born out by data.
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> Corporations adopted DEI because it was good for business. At the very least, it was good PR.
Corporations adopted DEI because they thought it was good for business. At the very least, it was good PR.
Until people wanted their surgeons to be hired because they were good surgeons, not because they belonged to the right disadvantaged group.
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All the surgeons are from Mumbai and Delhi because they're actually the best we can get. Most anglo-saxon Americons don't want to work that hard for someone else. They know that shit is stressful, and they're not having any of that. Or at least that's the picture my doctor paints. Actually his daughters paint, because they refused to go to med school.
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Regardless of whether their origin is foreign or domestic, the question has to be "Are you a competent surgeon?", not "What disadvantaged groups are you a member of?"
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But DEI was never about hiring someone unqualified or who had no merit. Instead hire on merit, instead of hiring because the person looks like the right sort.
Anyone who thinks companies hire on merit anyway is just fooling themselves. Stupid white males get hired more easily than brilliant black females.
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> how a lack of diversity leads to discrimination best exemplified by the FBI's report on the Fergusion, MO, police department
Don't look too closely at how minority police officers treat POC suspects. "You've not only broken the law, you are making your own race look bad. Here's a few extra kicks for you."
White cops: "[Sigh] There they go again."
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Yes, they all have freedom, the freedom to do what the conservatives want them to do. They're all about freedom if it's the right kind of freedom. The freedom to worship any god they want as long as it's the right God, and the freedom to have sex any way they want as long as it's the right kind of sex, and the right to run their business any way they want as long as they run it the correct way. That is, it's all about political correctness all over again.
Carbon credits are BS (Score:2)
That's probably what they just realized. Watch any documentary about how the last 10 years of those are going. Taking money to "protect" a forest that absolutely nobody had any intention to cut down. Yay, offset your carbon! Then there was the worst of the worst, where they provided high efficiency stoves for Africans and they just used the old ones and the new ones and cooked more, greatly increasing their emissions. That was from one of the larger companies selling carbon credits.
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> they provided high efficiency stoves for Africans and they just used the old ones and the new ones and cooked more
Cooked more what? I thought they were running out of food.
New vs old stoves? Why not a "cash for clunkers" program. Bring in the old and we'll give you new. If it was good enough for American's cars ...
even worse (Score:2)
not BS - carbon credits are SCAM!
It will take a lot of coal... (Score:2)
It will take a lot of coal for these banks to mine any bitcoin. All those abandoned AI GPUs and data centers will need to be put to profitable use somehow. MAGAA 2025!
What does this really mean? (Score:2)
Let's make our office buildings, datacenters, and business processes use less carbon and install or buy renewable energy sources: Fine. Go for it.
Let's mess with who we lend money to, or who we accept as customers: Not Fine. You've lost my trust, there's a risk I might become Politically Disfavored some time in the future, no matter how pure my motives are.
this is not about the environment (Score:2)
This is less about the environment and more about the UN. This is a UN program, so the MAGA cultists are against it.
Considering the environment at all: not MAGA.
Being involved in UN things: not MAGA
The banksters are getting ahead of what the death cult decrees before it blows its way through congress like an ambitious intern.
Baby Trump (Score:2)
These banks, known for abhorrent behavior, are trying to avoid scrutiny from the Trump administration, by sticking this pacifier in his mouth.
Money talks (Score:2)
In this case it talks death.
lending-related emissions?? one Al query undid it. (Score:2)
one Al query undid anything they accomplished over the course of years.
Protect the environment? (Score:3, Insightful)
I say lets spew the nastiest shit in the air for people to breathe, if it helps someone make a buck. Particularly in red states.
And I say... (Score:2, Insightful)
> I say lets spew the nastiest shit in the air for people to breathe, if it helps someone make a buck. Particularly in red states.
And I say let's do some studies and find methods that work, then get behind those methods.
And not, for example, spewing shit in the air to hurt people because they have the opposite ideology from me.
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This person gets it :)
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> spewing shit in the air to hurt people because they have the opposite ideology from me.
What if those people's ideology is hurt those that have the opposite ideology from me. What if they started a news, oops entertainment network where that's the whole appeal? To spout nothing but hate filled rhetoric 24-7.
Doesn't the bible say ,"an eye for an eye"? I say we start dumping our nuclear waste from California into the red states!
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The answers are easy. First, stop listening to the news. Secondly, the bible might call for an "eye for an eye" but that's how the world ends up blind.
It's OK for people to have different opinions without reducing them to "evil". I bet if you met 10 democratic politicians and 10 random people from "red states", you'd get on much better with the 10 random people.
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First, fox news isn't news. [1]It's entertainment. [niemanreports.org]
> It's OK for people to have different opinions without reducing them to "evil".
> 'So evil' and 'dangerous': Trump doubles down on calling Democrats 'enemies from within' “They are so bad and frankly, they're evil,” Mr. Trump said. “I will serve two terms, and I will be able to destroy leftism in this country and leave woke ideology in the dustbin of history,” Ron Desantis “put on the full armor of God” in order to “stand firm against the left’s schemes.” Ron Desantis
Pot calling the kettle black.
> I bet if you met 10 democratic politicians and 10 random people from "red states", you'd get on much better with the 10 random people.
I'm from a red state, no I wouldn't. Most people don't get along with lunatics that agree with such hate filled rhetoric. You really like to tell people what to do and how to live their lives. You must be from Florida.
[1] https://niemanreports.org/fox-dominion-lawsuit/
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You're wrong, oh so wrong.
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Jesus was literally quoted as saying "'An eye for an eye' would blind the whole world." It's not meant as an argument in favor of that.
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“You have heard that it was said, 'An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth. ' But I say to you, Do not resist one who is evil. But if any one strikes you on the right cheek, turn to him the other also" (Matthew 5:38-39 RSV).
fracture for fracture, eye for eye, tooth for tooth; whatever injury he has given a person shall be given to him. Leviticus 24:17-22
Nice try!
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Jesus was responding to someone advocating for this bullshit from Leviticus by admonishing them from taking the practice to its absurd conclusion. That tangentially related quote from Matthew doesn't even support your assertion, did you even read it before pasting?
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I'm not going to argue with you over with your interpretation of the bible + you're wrong about everything anyways. It literally says, fracture for fracture, eye for eye, tooth for tooth; whatever injury he has given a person shall be given to him.
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It said that in Leviticus, which was from hundreds of years prior, and it also says not to eat shrimp "because it's an abomination." There's an order of operations to the history you're trying and failing badly at misappropriating to fit your own argument, and if he were alive today it would actually be considered libelous. Claiming you're right doesn't make you right, and you're not fooling anyone here with this base-level attempt at Jedi mind tricking away facts.
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It literally says, fracture for fracture, eye for eye, tooth for tooth; whatever injury he has given a person shall be given to him.
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Look, the only thing you've convinced anyone of here is that you do actually fuck dogs.
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Ad hominem attack, I win again. You hilariously tried to say a quote from the bible doesn't mean what it says, because I said so.
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> ...doesn't mean what it says, because I said so .
Oh, so you are one of those delusional Satanists who thinks reality changes when you lie, to make your lies true. I had suspected, but thanks for confirming!
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I lied quoting the bible? Did i misquote it? It seems like you're the one that loves to deceive.
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Yes, you did misquote it, unless you think that now you can say the definition of "misquote" no longer says what it says because you say so.
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Context for "eye for an eye" in the Old Testament: Justice should not be based on revenge or excessive malice. In other words, the punishment should fit the crime (and not more than that), which was contrary to much of surrounding culture then. But those words get twisted to mean that taking revenge is ok, and Jesus effectively denounces this interpretation in Matthew 5:38.
Hammurabi's law (Score:1)
>> spewing shit in the air to hurt people because they have the opposite ideology from me.
> What if those people's ideology is hurt those that have the opposite ideology from me. What if they started a news, oops entertainment network where that's the whole appeal? To spout nothing but hate filled rhetoric 24-7.
> Doesn't the bible say ,"an eye for an eye"? I say we start dumping our nuclear waste from California into the red states!
"An eye for an eye" is not the bible, it's Hammurabi's law.
The bible comments that "an eye for an eye" makes the whole world blind.
If you're going to dump on the bible, you should dump on things that actually come from the bible.
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Who said anything about ideology? And isn't the ideology in red states literally spewing the nastiest shit in the air to breathe?
Also, no method at all is a "method that works" to a climate denier. No one who has an "opposite ideology" to you is going to "get behind" anything you support.
You know how all this works, right? The goal is division, it's intentional disagreement. That's what fascism is.
Re: And I say... (Score:1)
Even better idea:
1. Outsource peeing in the pool to the other side of the planet while importing the finished goods whose manufacturing was outsourced.
2. Pull some accounting tricks to make it look like cheap but unpredictable energy generation is identical to expensive but deterministic energy generation.
2a. Wave your hands and assert without evidence that the difference can be made up by everyone and their mother buying $50k worth of batteries and power electronics. All at once.
3. Profit!
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> I say lets spew the nastiest shit in the air for people to breathe, if it helps someone make a buck. Particularly in red states.
Nothing about joining limousine liberal climate alliances actually does anything to protect the environment.
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Note that this is a global climate coalition with 142 banks from 44 countries.
Net-Zero Banking Alliance is a partnership between the UN and the global financial industry.
Their status report from October 2024 can be found here: [1]https://www.unepfi.org/industr... [unepfi.org]
After just a quick glance, by someone with no serious competence, things looks fairly good.
[1] https://www.unepfi.org/industries/banking/net-zero-banking-alliance-2024-progress-update/
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... fairly good for the organization. (Just to be clearer.)