176.4 - Footnote: some corporations and foundations are realizing climate change requires action

Footnote: some corporations and foundations are realizing climate change requires action

And as a Footnote to that, here is a little more good news of at least a sort, indicating that some things are changing and who knows, maybe they will change fast enough. I still have grave doubts on that matter, but it's another case where I would love to have to say "I was wrong."

Corporations - including some major ones - are starting to realize that global warming is bad for their bottom line and making pledges to do something about it and sometimes even doing it.

As part of events surrounding the UN climate summit, about two dozen large companies - including Nestlé, Kellogg's, Hershey's, and General Mills - are committing to reduce deforestation by not obtaining products such as palm oil, soy, and beef from areas where forests have been recently or illegally cut down. Deforestation releases more carbon into the atmosphere, worsening global warming.

In addition, six of the world's largest oil and gas companies will commit to steps to reduce methane leaks in fossil fuel production. Methane is a much more powerful greenhouse gas than CO2.

And perhaps most significantly, at least 50 foundations will pledge to divest any holdings in the world's top 200 oil and gas producers, including ExxonMobil, BP, and Chevron. Perhaps most symbolically, among those 50 is the Rockefeller Brothers Fund, the charitable arm of the Rockefeller family. That's right, the Rockefellers, a family which made its money in oil, is disinvesting from fossil fuels, starting with coal and tar-sands mining.

(Yeah, yeah, it would have meant even more if they'd started by disinvesting from oil. Don't harsh my buzz, k? Which it seems is another phrase proving my further approach to senility since I just saw a site where someone was asking what his father means when he says that, but don't do it anyway.)

Some of this may just be feel-good stuff, but not all of it can be. And it remains true that money talks. Unhappily, it usually talks louder than nearly 600,000 people in the streets - but at least here it's saying some of the right words.

Sources cited in links:
http://www.usatoday.com/story/money/business/2014/09/21/companies-make-pledges-un-climate-summit/15891791/
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/09/21/rockefellers-fossil-fuels-climate-change_n_5859042.html