Money talks and money matters. Thus how we invest money matters for the climate crisis.
Do no harm
Thus I stopped using and doing business with the companies that finance the planet's destruction: Bank of America, Chase, Liberty Mutual. You can read about it in Stop The Money Pipeline.
Invest in green
Second, invest in the green economy. In the next 20-40 years the world has to stop using all fossil fuels in favor of renewables (of course, I want something faster, like 10 years to avoid chance of the catastrophic collapse, but let's not dwell on it for now). This means, the fossil industries that are already on shaky grounds will die. There is no other way - either Aramco, Shell, BP, Total, Gazprom, etc make money, or the planet survives.
The above companies are already living on borrowed time though. Their products are more expensive for producing electricity today, and the only way the can still keep going is through the political inertia and bribery. There is no technical obstacles to prevent the renewables from completely misplacing the fossils in the nearest future. And with the coming carbon fees the fossil producers are going to be bankrupt.
Meanwhile, this means that in the next 20-40 years (and probably faster) we need to expand the clean electricity production and transmission 5-20 times. Which is huge, and is an enormous investment opportunity. Which is why I went through a list of ETFs and picked a few that invest in the companies that make wind mills, solar farms, etc. By using ETFs I spread the risk of the investment - I don't want to pick the individual stocks, I want to invest in the entire sector.
Show me the tickers
Here are my picks for small long-term investments:
- ETHO selects U.S. equities of companies that exhibit the least carbon impact within its industry, with an equal weight to each selected company.
- PBW are stocks of publicly traded companies in the United States that are engaged in the business of the advancement of cleaner energy and conservation.
- TAN includes solar energy players.
- FAN has the wind energy and technology companies
- PZD "clean-tech" ETF designed to target companies that derive the majority of their revenue from products or services that are environmentally conscious.
- PHO are water companies and utilities
Aside: I love the ticker names like "TAN" for solar companies and "FAN" for wind companies.
The way I see it, the above sector either grows 10-20 times in the near future or we all die, in that case money does not matter.
Sources of information:
Where is nuclear?
I do not think the nuclear energy makes much sense to invest in. It is more expensive than renewables in producing electricity, and we do not have a way to handle the waste yet. The question of energy storage is solved or going to be solved depending on how you look at it; the battery technology is improving drastically every year,