Tag: environment

Thanks, Mom!

~ purplesage41 ~ 1 Comment

It’s Mother’s Day for every living being on earth.  Some of us remember as children celebrating Mother’s Day by making breakfast in bed or taking over some daily chores. Or making a card.  What can we do for our mother Gaia, the earth, today?

We can stop treating our mother the way the boy in Shel Silverstein’s The Giving Tree did.  Haven’t read it? It’s a good place to start your reflection on the primrose path from modest requests to exploitation.

All mothers like flowers (except for some with allergies…).  Plant something that b\blooms.  Plant something that invites bees and butterflies to visit your yard. A bird bath for her feathered children.  No mosquito spraying or toxic herbicides—birds eat mosquitos but shouldn’t drink water that has been sprayed, and dogs and cats roam in grass that is contaminated and harmful to those sprays.     While you are at it, plant a small vegetable garden (or a large one, if you have time to spare) that is organic in every way.  Organic fertilizer. Mushroom compost.  Space permitting, plant a tree, Gaia will be proud of you.

There are other ways in which you can gift your earth mother-–less pollution from fossil fuels, lower the thermostat in our shared house by resisting or reversing climate change in partners with other mother-loving tree huggers.  Hassle hour city council about mosquito spraying and other toxic practices.  Push them for bike paths and sidewalks. streets and more public transportation.

At night, try to enjoy your canopy of starry sky, but it may be hard to see if for all the light pollution.  Can you turn down the lights a little so we can see the earth, and the sound pollution so we can hear the birds?

Thanks, Mother Gaia.  We hope we have come up with some gifts that will last all year and beyond for your grandchildren and outs.

ESG and Me

~ purplesage41 ~ 3 Comments

A few days ago, I was in a gathering of some of my fellow retired academic colleagues from a variety of disciplines. Most if not all of the ten or so present seem to share my center-left politics—up to a point.  One of them asked me about Milton Friedman and his famous assertion that the sole responsibility of a corporation’s board of directors is to maximize shareholder wealth.  I gave my fairly standard economist reply, pointing to an erroneous interpretation of the Ford/Dodge Supreme Court decision in the 1930s and the more general historical meaning and purpose of a corporation charter in which they had certain public obligations in return for the opportunity for limited liability and eternal life (which definitely does not square with making them persons, as our current Supreme Court appears to believe). Two of my colleagues replied, isn’t that what you want them to do when you invest in a corporation—maximize your returns? No, I said, I want them to earn a fair return while acting like responsible corporate citizens, which is my reason for using ESG as a guideline in investing. At least two of them expressed surprise and perhaps even dismay at my response.

ESG as a criterion for investment decisions  has taken a lot of flak lately. Those three letters stand for environment (business practices that minimize environmental harm done in the process of producing a product or service), social (treating suppliers, employees, customers and communities as you would like to be treated in a role reversal), and governance (transparency and accountability).  Except in some  red states, where thanks to generations of underperforming public schools, people believe that these three letters spell WOKE.

There is some debate in the business literature about the relative performance of companies that Try to honor ESG in their corporate practices.  That’s a reasonable question to ask, but is it even relevant? If a company is destroying the environment, shortchanging its suppliers, extracting tax breaks from desperate local communities, exploiting its workers and deceiving its stockholders, but turning a nice profit, do you really want to encourage that kind of behavior? I will eventually get to the second in my three-part series on virtue. But don’t wait for that installment to think now about practicing virtue in your roles as stockholders, directors, management, customers, or board members. As a shareholder, you ae an owner, and as an owner, you are morally liable for the actions of that corporation, even if you aren’t legally liable.

I know that all of us are trying to swim to shore in a raging sea of information (and misinformation ) overload.  So I look for shortcuts.  ESG is one shortcut for at least increasing the likelihood of morally acceptable behavior.  Shopping with or working for B-corporations, who have accountability not just to shareholders but also  to workers, suppliers, customers and the surrounding  community spelled out in their corporate charters.

How and with whom we spend or invest our money is a measure of our values.  ESG makes the job of informed moral decision-making in the market easier for me. How about you?