Rockefeller Fund Dumping Fossil Fuels, Hits Exxon On Climate Issues (cnbc.com)

mdsolar quotes a report from Reuters: The Rockefeller Family Fund said on Wednesday it will divest from fossil fuels as quickly as possible and "eliminate holdings" of Exxon Mobil, chiding the oil company for allegedly misleading the public about the threat of climate change. The move by the U.S. based charity, which will also include coal and Canadian oil sands holdings, is especially notable because a century ago John D. Rockefeller Sr. made a fortune running Standard Oil, a precursor to Exxon Mobil.
Given the threat posed to the survival of human and natural ecosystems, "there is no sane rationale for companies to continue to explore for new sources of hydrocarbons," the fund said. Exxon did not immediately comment. In a letter posted on its website, the Rockefeller Family Fund said Exxon's conduct on climate issues appears to be "morally reprehensible."

Comments

Re:Fiduciary sense?

[MightyMartian]

1. That climate always changes doesn't mean it changes so radically and so quickly.
2. There are no lack of other sources of energy. Hydrocarbons are hardly the only solution.
3. There are other ways to produce plastics and similar materials.

So what we really have here is you posting patently false things as if they were true.

Re:Fiduciary sense?

[Geoffrey.landis]

I get the whole Greenwashing that happened there, but seriously - no matter the {whatever} you hold concerning AGW, three things are constant:

1) Barring thermonuclear warfare or a wayward asteroid, global climate will change no matter what we do (or don't do),

Yes to the first part: Yes, human sources of climate change are not the only source of climate change; the other sources are still there.

and will continue on its current trend.

...and no to the second. There is very very good evidence that the current trend is due to human activities. There simply are no natural sources of change that have this magnitude of effect this quickly that we would not be able to see. (Remember, we do measure solar output. One thing we know: the current trend is not due to solar variability. If we stop these activities, the current trend will stop. (Although it will take a while to do so.)

2) Barring the invention of commercially viable electrical generation from fusion (or some similar massive source of energy)

You just said "unless there are other sources of energy, we have to use the current sources of energy." That statement is a tautology.

OK, so it is desirable to develop new sources of energy if we don't want to use the current sources. Fair enough. Let's get to it.

...

Plastics (made from petroleum) are the backbone of technology and civilization at this time - no viable replacement has yet arisen that doesn't require even more damage to the ecosystems, or can last nearly as long when the requirements call for longevity/durability. (e.g. yeah you can make plastic from corn, but it'll be much shorter-lived and will require massive up-scaling in agriculture, which presents problems of its own.)

1. Plastics account for so small an amount of the hydrocarbon usage that you can't even notice it on the pie chart.
2. ...and plastic isn't the problem, since turning fossil hydrocarbons into plastics puts the carbon into the plastic, not into the atmosphere.