Chicago Should Brace For A Cold Winter: City Counsil Bans Fossil-Fuel Investments
With record commodity prices, rolling power shortages, widespread demand destruction and gas stations that are about to run out of diesel, Europe is learning the hard way why leaving your energy policy in the hands of a petulant Swedish teenager is a terrible idea. Now it’s the turn of that other liberal disaster zone: Chicago.
On Wednesday, just as the world is realizing that picking ESG over fossil fuels is a great idea until the electricity bill arrives, the Chicago City Council voted to ban city investments in coal, oil and gas companies in an effort to combat climate change.
The measure was of course supported by Chicago’s “well-endowed” mayor Lori Lightfoot…
According to a lawsuit, Chicago mayor Lori Lightfoot often claims she has the biggest dick in Chicago. https://t.co/RDl5L5EoOA
— Clay Travis (@ClayTravis) March 3, 2022
… and Treasurer Melissa Conyears-Ervin, who manages investments for the city as well as its pension funds and oversees $9 billion in assets. The city plans to create a list of companies that are coal, oil, and gas-reserve owners, ranked by potential carbon emissions. The treasurer won’t invest any city funds and will divest securities or other obligations of the companies on the list, according to the ordinance.
While this may sound like a brilliant idea to clueless and woke liberal snowflakes, it is catastrophic over the long run because it is precisely the “evil” fossil fuel energy sector that is the only green sector in 2022 and will likely outperform the rest of the market in coming years as capital flows out of such ridiculous contraptions as ESG and into the only sector that keeps humanity warm and moving. In fact, even Bloomberg staffers are starting to make fun of the “green” virtue signaling that gripped Wall Street over the past 5 years, and which has now cost most fund managers bigly as they all underperform the energy sector.
— Athanasios Psarofagis (@tpsarofagis) March 22, 2022
Alas, logic and reason do not work well in liberal fecal zones best known for their record daily shootings among blacks (which the liberal media conveniently ignores because Black Lives Matter… except when it comes to Chicago), and so instead of thinking at least 2 moves ahead, the city council ordnance came up with the perfect example of opposite day, warning that “the consequences of climate change stand to make Chicago a less desirable place to live and work, negatively affecting the fiscal and social health of the city.” It said that divestment will take place “as soon as practicable or in accordance with the written investment policy.”
The nation’s third-most populous city is the latest government to take steps to wield its investment policy to fight climate change. Thirty-eight U.S. cities have divested from fossil fuels companies, according to the ordinance. Maine last year enacted a law requiring divestment from fossil fuels, the first U.S. state to do so. In other words, instead of being invested in names like XOM or PXD which have soared in the past year, their retirees and public workers have their money invested in toxic garbage memes and “growth” stonks which have lost more than 50% in recent months.
Of course, stupidity is not confined to Chicago – in October, New York City’s pension funds pledged to reach net-zero greenhouse gas emissions across investment portfolios by 2040. That followed the New York State Common Retirement Fund, which announced in late 2020 that it may divest from the riskiest oil and gas companies by 2025.
And now we wonder how long until widespread energy rationing due to shortages of raw commodities – courtesy of the sanctions imposed on Russia – will force the “riskiest oil and gas companies” to retaliate and leave such beacons of liberal virtue signaling as Chicago and New York in the dark and cold.
Tyler Durden
Wed, 03/23/2022 – 19:20
via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/SjCZLkH Tyler Durden