Ireland Becomes World's First Country To Divest From Fossil Fuels (theguardian.com)

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Guardian: The Republic of Ireland will become the world's first country to sell off its investments in fossil fuel companies, after a bill was passed with all-party support in the lower house of parliament. The state's 8 billion euro national investment fund will be required to sell all investments in coal, oil, gas and peat "as soon as is practicable", which is expected to mean within five years. The Irish fossil fuel divestment bill was passed in the lower house of parliament on Thursday and it is expected to pass rapidly through the upper house, meaning it could become law before the end of the year. The Irish state investment fund holds more than 300 million euro in fossil fuel investments in 150 companies. The bill defines a fossil fuel company as a company that derives 20% or more of its revenue from exploration, extraction or refinement of fossil fuels. The bill also allows investment in Irish fossil fuel companies if this funds their move away from fossil fuels. "The [divestment] movement is highlighting the need to stop investing in the expansion of a global industry which must be brought into managed decline if catastrophic climate change is to be averted," said Thomas Pringle, the independent member of parliament who introduced the bill. "Ireland by divesting is sending a clear message that the Irish public and the international community are ready to think and act beyond narrow short term vested interests."

Comments

Re:Seems meaningless or foolish

[HarrySquatter]

What are you talking about?

I quoted what Inwas talking about:

Just go look at any major "oil" company website - I bet your bottom dollar their renewable investments are prominently displayed or easy to find.. bragged about for cred really.

Nowhere on Exxon Mobil’s page was any of this mentioned.

One of the first links, "Energy and Carbon Summary", talks about their research and investment in renewables.

Bullshit. You clearly didn’t actually read that report. The report was mostly about natural gas. The only thing close to them investing in renewables was some paragraph about making petroleum lubricants for wind turbines.

Re:Dumb

[q_e_t]

Ireland has a lot of windy coastline compared to the size of its population. It has the potential to do very well selling energy to other nations in Europe, especially the UK. Brexit may make it a little more complex, but the links to France already exist from the UK, so selling on to the EU via the UK is theoretically possible with more investment in the grid. It could actually be quite a good money spinner.

Hard to believe a whole government of any country would believe in the hoax.

Glaciers seem to be part of the conspiracy, by melting.

Ther eis a huge difference

[aepervius]

A government is not beholden to a limited "private club" third party to get "profit". It is beholden to the whole of the public. And while some part clearly are co-opted or even corrupted by industry lobbyist (from the exact same corporation you seem so fond of) and while clearly some government are more democratic than other, in your average western government the public HAS an influence on laws. The public has NO influence on corporation, only those of that private club (the share holder, the board). The end result is that the corporation by large are far more sociopathic than the government on average. Corporation have no qualm polluting the environment if it means sparring a few greenbacks for example. That is why most democratic country have the equivalent of the EPA. Most corporation do not care if a few kids get mangled in the machinery (or at least used to) or do not care if kids get an education, this is why we have labor laws , education laws and no child work allowed. Corporation do care to abuse worker and pay the least possible, which is why there was script currency and people making no money back in the 19th. Don't get me started on the whole finance system. And I pass many other shenanigan corporation would immediately be back to do if enabled. Yet you do not see most government or most civil servant do that. Why ? Because since government are not beholden to short term profit, while they DO attract people who want power and not care about consequence, the mass of civil servant and the hierarchy is not beholden to short term profit and that small private subset of civilian and thus far less likely do sociopathic stuff.

That is a short summary , with caveat, but the bottom line is , if there was no law against grinding live puppy into paste , and it would bring money, a corporation WOULD do it.