everyone gets a c-

An organization called Shift recently issued a report card evaluating Canadian pension funds according to their anti-fossil fuel investment positions. They describe themselves as: … a charitable initiative that works to protect pensions and the climate by bringing together beneficiaries and their pension funds on the climate crisis. We help Canadians understand where their retirement wealth is invested by tracking pension fund investments and strategy. We educate and empower Canadians on how to engage constructively with their pension funds to address the climate crisis. Now is the time for Canada’s pension funds to shift their investment approach and invest in a prosperous zero-carbon future.
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Shift is part of the woke Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) movement that seeks to end investment in oil production. The intent of Shift is to motivate workers and retirees to pressure pension fund managers with the message that they should abandon fossil fuel investment … and by extension, have them ignore their fiduciary duty to protect clients’ money through fully diverse portfolios.

​What ESC-driven greens have missed is the basic concept of supply and demand. Without petroleum demand there would be no reason to supply it. If it’s evil to supply oil it must also be evil to demand it, and every part of the economy demands it. ESG funds won’t invest in corporations that produce fossil fuel, but they will invest in those that profusely use it in pursuit of enormous corporate profits.

An irony of ESG is the fact that a big part of the funding received by all eco-organizations comes from large trust funds. These trusts are established by rich people who made their fortunes in oil demanding industries and are now trying to do something good. A relevant example of this is the California-based Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation.

Gordon Moore was the founder of computer chip giant Intel. That company not only depends on significant amounts of oil used in the manufacture and distribution of their product, but secondarily Intel shares responsibility for the enormous carbon footprint from the proliferation of cheap personal computing throughout the world. The Moores made a fortune, and their foundation has about $9.5 billion invested in hundreds of funds and individual stocks such as Amazon, Cisco, Marriott, Unilever, etc. Their fund grows in size on the back of the American economy, allowing direction of a portion of that growth (over $300 million a year) towards various virtuous goals.

Some of the money goes to Canada through a Vancouver-based non-profit called MakeWay, which functions like a donation fulfillment centre, distributing financial support wherever the fund directs. In 2021, grants from Moore to MakeWay were over $2.3 million. MakeWay’s total in-coming grants for the 2022 fiscal year were about $70 million however, so the Moores are a big donor but there are many more like them.
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Getting back to Shift, how can they be critical of investment in oil production when it is demanded by all the other ESG-approved sectors of the economy? This is especially so when you read their website footer: Shift is a project on MakeWay’s shared platform. Amassing the Moore fortune required significant utilization of oil, the foundation continues to invest in oil demanding industries, and MakeWay blithely distributes the spoils from this and other CO2-tarnished legacies in supportive partnership with Shift’s hypocritical crusade.
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