MoPress

Author: mopress

  • Domini 400 @ Green Century Equity Fund

    According to the Green Century Equity Fund (GCEQX) profile at Yahoo Finance, the fund’s date of inception was Sept. 13, 1995.

    “The Fund seeks to achieve its objective by investing in the stocks which make up the Domini 400 Social Index (the KLD 400 Index),” says the 2-page Fund Brief posted at greencentury.com.

    For more info on the history and nature of the Domini 400 Social Index, see the article below on Social Investing with ETF Funds.

    The GCEQX fund’s administrator and advisor, Green Century Capital Management, was founded in 1991 “by a partnership of non-profit environmental advocacy organizations,” says the Fund Brief. As a result of this legacy:

  • “100% of the profits earned on the fees Green Century Capital Management receives for managing the Fund belong to these organizations and are available to fund the environmental and public interest advocacy work they perform.”
  • “The non-profits seek to preserve and protect the environment by campaigning for the conservation of clean air, clean water, and open space; filing lawsuits against companies that pollute illegally; and advocating for lower use of toxic chemicals and the reduction of greenhouse gases causing global warming.”

  • Social Investing with ETF Funds: DSI and KLD

    Summary: KLD excludes tobacco. DSI excludes tobacco, alcohol, firearms, military weapons, gambling, and nuclear power.

    By Greg Moses

    According to background materials posted at Domini.Com, the first “social index” for investors was rolled out in 1990 by Amy Domini and her partners, Peter Kinder and Steve Lydenberg.

    The Domini 400 Social Index was “an index of 400 primarily large-cap U.S. corporations, roughly comparable to the S&P 500, selected based on a wide range of social and environmental standards.”

    Today Domini and Lydenberg oversee a half-dozen mutual funds at Domini Social Investments, while their original indexing partner Kinder continues to manage the Domini 400 Social Index (DS400) at KLD Research & Analytics, Inc. (kld.com).

    In addition to the DS400 index, KLD offers a half dozen Sustainability Indexes (which they properly call Indices) and the KLD Select Social Index.

    KLD also offers a research service with searchable databases for investors who want to keep tabs on “the social, environmental, and governance (ESG) performance of corporations.”

    Jan. 24, 2005 was the inception date for an Exchange Traded Fund (ETF) based on the KLD Select Social Index. It is offered by iShares under the ticker symbol KLD. According to the fact sheet for the KLD ETF, the index underlying the fund is comprised of about 250 companies selected from the S&P 900 on the basis of “ESG scores” –tobacco companies excluded.

    On Nov. 14, 2006, iShares followed up with an ETF based on the Domini 400 Social Index (DSI). The fact sheet for the iShares KLD Social 400 ETF says that 250 of the companies in the index come from the S&P 500. To these companies are added another 100 large and mid-sized companies along with 50 smaller ones.

    The fact sheet for the KLD Domini Social 400 Index that underlies DSI shows that the negative screen is more demanding than with the KLD Select Social Index that underlies KLD. KLD excludes tobacco. But DSI also excludes “companies engaged beyond specific levels of involvement in Firearms, Alcohol, Military Weapons, Gambling, and Nuclear Power.”

    As of July 2, 2009, the portfolio tracker at MarketWatch.Com reported that KLD had an average volume of 19.6k per day, whereas DSI had an average volume of 7.70k.

    Disclosure: the author owns some shares of DSI.

  • Green China

    Browsing the official Chinese websites via Google translate we find the following:

    CPC Central Committee Political Bureau Standing Committee, Vice Premier Li Keqiang on the 17th [June 2009] to participate in the national energy-saving publicity week energy conservation activities and to attend the forum, stressed the need to thoroughly implement the scientific concept of development, adhere to the conservation of resources, environmental protection a basic national policy, to promote energy-saving emission reduction, the construction of ecological civilization, as to cope with the international financial crisis, to promote stable and rapid economic development tasks, speed up the development of low resource consumption, less environmental pollution, good economic benefits of green industries, and foster new economic growth point, to achieve sustainable development.

    Also, we read that earlier in the month of June, China hosted a joint meeting with an EU delegation of “government departments, academic institutions, as well as European energy companies” to “deal with the important topic of climate change.” Here’s the report in Google-speak:

    China’s National Development and Reform Commission Secretary . . . said at the meeting that the Chinese government issued a series of clean development mechanisms to encourage the development of policies, and to take positive action to expand the CDM implementation in China.

    Practice has proved that this mechanism is not only Chinese enterprises to mobilize the enthusiasm of energy-saving emission reduction, but also reduces the completion of the Kyoto Protocol, developed countries to establish the cost of emission reduction targets, is a win-win mechanism.

    One wonders how the Chinese and EU communities perceive the question of “global warming denial” which seems to pervade all discussions of the matter in the USA.

  • The Planet's Imperative: Stop War, Shine On

    Common Dreams

    by Susan Van Haitsma 

    On Earth Day, I contemplated the pre-dawn sky, looking for shooting stars.  The evening prior, my partner and I had scouted out a viewing spot adjoining a vacant lot just a few blocks from home.  Though we live in a central neighborhood, the clear air and waning moon offered favorable viewing conditions for the Lyrid meteor shower even from our urban vantage point.

    In a warm climate, the transition between night and day is a time of rejuvenation for the earth, when ground water rises into plant stems, pushing them upward.  Planted in my camp chair, gazing upward, I thought I could feel the life force, too — the magnetism of the heavens pulling gently against the gravity that held me down and drew the meteors in.

    The night was balmy, and the quiet was actually filled with sound: insects humming, a mockingbird singing his brilliant medley, our neighborhood screech owl trilling his single note.   There was some street traffic: a dumpster truck, a few cars and several bicycles that glided by.  Above, two planes passed the spot we were watching during the hour we were there.

    My partner and I saw 6 meteors each.  The brightest was a burst of light with no visible trail. The others made brief but unmistakable dashes between the constellations.  We welcomed each silent flash with an exclamation.  Did the mockingbird and the owl see them, too?

    Staring into space makes me think about time.  I want the planet to celebrate an uncountable number of future Earth Days.  But, the darkest hour reveals the starkest truth:  the primary obstacle to the earth’s longevity is the effect of my own species on our shared home. 

    In a quiet moment of reflection in the film, “An Inconvenient Truth,” Al Gore asks himself, in voiceover, about the barriers that keep human beings from living more sustainably.   It would have been the perfect opportunity to discuss the most inconvenient truth: our preoccupation with security is killing us.  The drive to keep ourselves “safe” has become the greatest threat to our existence.

    Many indicators point to the US Department of Defense as the largest institutional polluter in the world.  Most tellingly, the US military is the world’s largest single oil purchaser and consumer.   If the invasion of Iraq, and perhaps Afghanistan, was about US oil interests, then military occupation serves mainly to perpetuate the military, like a snake devouring its own tail, feeding and destroying itself at the same time.

    War is not only ungreen, it discourages greenness.  I sometimes feel ridiculous sorting my recycling and installing low energy light bulbs while the massive pistons of the war machine keep pumping, consuming incalculable amounts of energy for every watt I try to conserve.       

    On Earth Day eve, Al Gore said that we are now at a tipping point.  “This year, 2009, is the Gettysburg for the environment,” he said.  It’s interesting that he should use a war metaphor for his call to action.  The US Civil War caused untold environmental destruction along with its huge human death toll.  Both sides lose when home is a battlefield.  Now, home encompasses the globe.

    We human beings can decide to abolish war.  The owl needs its prey, but we do not.  Our most basic, most elegant tools are at hand:  communication, education, international law, creative arts and sciences, nonviolent resistance.  When we are threatened, we have these tools, mightier than the sword, to protect ourselves.  In the process, we protect our descendants – and the owl, too.   

    If the Obama Administration is urging us to look forward, then we must take the long view of the future.  The long view means valuing the history lesson along with the brain-storming session.  If we care what happens to our progeny ten generations from now, we’ve got to consider the trajectory from ten generations back as equally relevant.

    The life of our planet must not be a flash in the pan, a brief streak of light in time’s expanse.   Our ancient Mother deserves a future of infinite history, and so do we, her youngest children.   To celebrate our common Mother’s Day, let’s give her bicycles, sustainable agriculture, windmills, solar panels, rain barrels.  Because it makes no sense to give her bicycles with one hand and bombs with the other, it’s time to acknowledge that the critical point we have reached is not a call to arms, it’s a call to lay them down. 

    Martin Luther King, Jr. said it more directly when he told the United States that our choice was between nonviolence and non-existence.  This is our Montgomery moment, our Letter from a Birmingham Jail.  The planet can’t wait, and neither must we.