Big Oil’s heirs join call for action as climate summit opens

[ErikJ]

Source: WaPo

For 140 years, the Rockefellers were the oil industry’s first family, scions of a business empire that spawned companies called Exxon, Mobil, Amoco and Chevron. So it was no trivial matter when a group of Rockefeller heirs decided recently to begin severing financial ties to fossil fuels.

“There is a moral imperative to preserve a healthy planet,” said Valerie Rockefeller Wayne, a great-great-granddaughter of oil magnate John D. Rockefeller Sr. and a trustee of the largest charitable foundation in which the family still plays the leading role.

On Monday, the foundation, known as the Rockefeller Brothers Fund, will formally announce plans to begin divesting itself of fossil-fuel stocks, citing concerns about climate change. The symbolic cutting of ties to a key part of the family’s heritage is being timed with the start of another symbolism-laden event: a gathering of world leaders to grapple with the environmental consequences of decades of fossil-fuel burning.

President Obama will join heads of state from more than 120 countries Tuesday at an unusual climate summit convened by U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon. The meeting in New York is aimed at persuading governments to do more to reduce emissions of greenhouse gases in the face of new evidence of an accelerating buildup of heat-trapping carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.

Read more: http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/big-oils-heirs-join-call-for-action-as-climate-summit-opens/2014/09/21/ab27b1ce-40ea-11e4-b0ea-8141703bbf6f_story.html

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[dipsydoodle]

1. There is a moral imperative to preserve a healthy planet.

K & R

[Cha]

2. Thank you, Rockefellers! thanks ErikJ

[SleeplessinSoCal]

3. Tweeted this off to denying loud mouth Rohrabacher.

Agonizingly dense Dana.

[ReRe]

4. K&R

This is a big one. The Rockefeller Bros Fund is divesting itself of fossil-fuel stocks. Old money gets a conscience. Who'd-a thunk it? Thank you, Rockefeller descendents! And thank you for the OP, ErikJ!

[Uncle Joe]

5. Kicked and recommended.

Thanks for the thread, ErikJ.

[Amonester]

6. Huge releases of methane (20 times more damaging than CO2) already ongoing in the Artic :(

I am afraid it's too late

The auto-feeding loop of more methane = more trapped heat = less ice cap surfaces = even more methane = (repeat increasingly each iteration) will be impossible to stop now. Only Mother Nature will be able to stop it and start reversing its consequences but it will take her tens of millions of years to re-create the biosphere like it was before the industrial revolution began.

Too little, too late.

[Petrushka]

7. Thanks for the link! K & R

[KurtNYC]

8. the rockefellers own considerable farmland in my area

and promote sustainable farming through orgs like this one:

http://www.stonebarnscenter.org/

[Lenomsky]

9. said Valerie Rockefeller Wayne, a great-great-granddaughter

I guess she'd like her GG Grand children to have a healthy plant K&R

[blkmusclmachine]

10. Way too little, and way too late.

[candelista]

11. Maybe they've decided it just isn't worth it in the Middle East.

There is no future in oil investment in an environment of continual war and chaos.

It's good news if the Rockefellers have finally figured this out.

[wordpix]

13. others have decided it IS worth ME oil wars as long as they can use public blood/treasure

This one thing really gets me---Big Oil along with Congress would never think of sending their 18-30 y.o. children to the Mideast to fight in oil wars, yet it's fine to send poor kids just out of high school Meanwhile, these privileged young adults are sent to expensive colleges (no problem paying full freight---they're the oil baron kids), trips to Europe and the Caribbean, and Big Oil acts as if the latest installment of Endless Mideast War has nothing to do with protecting their resources, territorial holdings and profits .

[Octafish]

12. Good on them.

Not all of them are like the rest of them.

Thank you for the heads-up, ErikJ!