Green Shareholders Try to Sabotage America’s Energy Industry
A wave of destructive proposals began after a 2020 briefing to the Biden transition team.
Taking ideological proponents to court may help investors in another way. It may reveal the degree to which this is a coordinated effort to open the door to purely ideological proposals that undermine
STEPHEN HEINS
APR 01, 2024
When the spring proxy season kicks off in April, executives at public companies should expect a flood of political shareholder proposals focused on issues like climate change rather than traditional business concerns. From 2021 to 2023, the number of environmental and social shareholder proposals jumped 52%. It wasn’t an accident.
Weeks after the last presidential election, a well-connected network of asset managers and nonprofits began an effort to use shareholder proposals to push European-style climate policies on U.S. companies and consumers. In December 2020, the Shareholder Rights Group and the Interfaith Center of Corporate Responsibility—the latter an association of religious organizations, other nonprofit groups, unions and investors with more than $2 trillion in total assets—presented a briefing paper to the Biden transition team that called on the new administration to allow shareholder proposals “to set greenhouse gas targets aligned with global climate goals,” in particular the Paris climate accord’s goal of net zero carbon emissions by 2050.
https://stephenheins.substack.com/p/green-shareholders-try-to-sabotage
