The carbon time bomb in your retirement account
By Todd Woody
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Last year, the International Energy Agency warned that a third of the world’s oil, coal, and other fossil fuel reserves must remain untouched until 2050 to stave off catastrophic climate change. That, naturally, freaked out some investors. What’s the future worth of an ExxonMobil or a Chevron if governments ever get their act together and impose carbon taxes that make burning that dinosaur juice unprofitable? That would transform those fossil fuel reserves into “stranded assets,” turning the billions of dollars spent discovering and securing that untapped oil, natural gas, and coal into liabilities.
Such a scenario would make sources of renewable energy, such as wind and solar, even more competitive, further depressing fossil fuel behemoths’ stock price — and the value of your portfolio. Then there’s a growing and increasingly successful campaigns to persuade pension funds, universities, and municipalities to divest from fossil fuel companies to fight climate change. According to an analysis by the Climate Accountability Institute, a nonprofit institute, just 90 fossil fuel companies have been responsible for 63 percent of the world’s cumulative greenhouse gas emissions since 1854. ExxonMobil alone has spewed 3.3 percent of that carbon.
Now Wall Street is starting to take seriously the prospect that a carbon-constrained economy could put fossil fuel companies in the red. Bloomberg terminals — those ubiquitous desktop computer screens that everyone from state treasurers to hedge-fund cowboys rely on to make financial decisions — have quietly added a function called the Carbon Risk Valuation Tool, or CRVT in Bloomberg-speak. The CRVT, for the first time, allows investors to view the impact of say, declining oil prices due to carbon regulations, on companies’ stock prices, or how a carbon tax would affect the value of a portfolio.
. . . the tool foreshadows a future when algorithms will routinely calculate the financial impact of other environmental risks, such as water shortages and extreme weather spawned by climate change.
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John Podesta, climate hawk and Keystone opponent, joins Obama team
By Lisa Hymas
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John Podesta is no stranger to the White House; he served as chief of staff to President Clinton. And he’s no stranger to the Obama team; he led the president’s transition into office after the 2008 election. Since then, he’s served as an “outside adviser,” The New York Times reports, and “has occasionally criticized the administration, if gently, from his perch as the founder and former president of the Center for American Progress, a center-left public policy research group that has provided personnel and policy ideas to the administration.”
For the coming year, he’ll be advising from the inside. He will help out on health care and “will focus in particular on climate change issues, a personal priority of Mr. Podesta’s,” according to the Times. Podesta is expected to encourage Obama to take action through his executive authority, as Congress is unwilling and unable to pass legislation on climate change or much else. “Podesta has been urging Obama for three years to use the full extent of his authority as president to go around Congress,” Politico reports.
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Podesta has allied himself closely with some of [the environmentalists opposing the pipeline], including the wealthy investor Tom Steyer, who has been mobilizing opposition to the project. They appeared together at CAP’s conference to celebrate its 10th anniversary this fall.
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Will Podesta make the difference on Keystone? Don’t count on it. There are already plenty of people in the administration on both sides of the issue. Ultimately, the call is Obama’s alone.
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Harlem Is Getting the Biggest Free Public Wi-Fi Network In the U.S.
By Leslie Horn
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Mayor Mike Bloomberg—clearly on his farewell I promise I made New York better tour—just announced the initiative today. The network will stretch from 110th to 138th Streets between Frederick Douglass Boulevard and Madison Avenue. It'll roll out in three phases, the first of which (110th to 120th between Frederick Douglass and Madison) is already in the works and set to be done by the end of the month. Phase two (121st to 126th) is supposed to be done by February 2014, and Phase three (127th to 138th) is looking at a May 2014 end date.
. . . the Harlem initiative is pretty cool in terms of just how freaking big it is, and for the fact that it will cover thousands low-income residents that might not otherwise have access to the internet.
To put the scope into perspective, when finished, the network will theoretically give an internet connection to around 80,000 Harlem dwellers, 13,000 of which live in public housing.
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New York State Lawsuit Contends Chimpanzees Deserve Human(like) Rights
By Jason Mick
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His teaching credentials are impressive; he's a regular instructor at Harvard Law School, Vermont Law School, Chicago's John Marshall Law School, Portland, Oregon's Lewis & Clark Law School, and Tufts University School of Veterinary Medicine (Boston). But it was not until this year that Professor Wise felt the time was right to pursue his boldest legal stand -- contending that some primates should be entitled to human-like protections under the U.S. Code of Law.
Last week the law professor's nonprofit, the Nonhuman Rights Project (NhRP), filed a suit against three chimpanzee owners. The case was initiated via a 70-page memo filed with the State Supreme Court in Fulton County, N.Y. It targets a specific chimpanzee, named Tommy. Three other chimps -- two of which live in New York State -- are expected to be included in follow-up, claims this month.
This petition asks this court to issue a writ recognizing that Tommy (the chimp) is not a legal thing to be possessed by respondents, but rather is a cognitively complex autonomous legal person with the fundamental legal right not to be imprisoned.
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Some researchers regard Professor Wise's legal "hobby" with derision. They contend that the ability to freely medically experiment on primates, subjecting them infection, brain surgery, and potential treatments, has been critical to studying human neurology and diseases. In particular Great Apes are being employed to study the hepatitis C virus and to develop treatment strategies to combat the Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV).
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But regardless of these academics viewpoint, the fact is that they are in minority worldwide. Currently only the U.S. and Gabon officially allow medical trials on primates. In many ways other industrialized have already granted higher primates some legal standing. Spain recently became the first country to officially recognize Great Apes as limited "people" rights-wise; some lower courts in India have made similar rulings.
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'Volcker rule' ban on risky trades passed by regulators
By (BBC)
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All five US financial regulators have approved the Volcker rule, designed to restrict the finance industry in the wake of the 2008-09 financial collapse.
Named after former Federal Reserve chairman Paul Volcker, it bans banks from using their own funds for trading activities.
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Although the Volcker rule was passed as part of the Dodd-Frank legislation in 2010, it has faced difficulties in implementation, mostly due to opposition from the banking industry.
US President Barack Obama applauded the passage of a rule proposed more than three years ago.
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Although banks had been hoping for a less strict interpretation of the rule, recent trading debacles, including JP Morgan's "London whale" loss, seemed to have led to a stronger measure.
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GCC states hope Iran deal will end tension
By (Al Jazeera)
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The Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) has welcomed the preliminary landmark deal between Iran and the P5+1 (United States, Russia, United Kingdom, France, China and Germany), further depicting that a fresh leaf is turned over in the relationship between the Sunni monarchies of the Gulf region that make up the GCC and their Shia neighbour.
"The GCC states have expressed their comfort towards the preliminary Geneva agreement pertaining to the Iranian nuclear programme, and we look forward to its success to lead to a permanent pact, that drives away the specter of tension from our region," Emir Sheikh Sabah Al-Ahmad Al-Sabah, the Emir of Kuwait, said on Tuesday at the opening session of the 34th summit in Kuwait City.
This is the first such summit since Iran struck a deal with the P5+1 in late November, to curb its controversial nuclear activity in exchange for partial easing of sanctions that have exhausted Tehran’s economy. The interim agreement is seen as a step towards concluding a final deal over Iran's nuclear programme.
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Washington has been trying to reassure its Gulf allies of their security following the deal reached with Iran.
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