From the Salon interview with McKibben:
Salon: Do you see that as something that’s more symbolic, or do you think it could have a real economic impact?
McKibben: I think it’ll have its real economic impact, oddly, through symbolic action. We can’t bankrupt Exxon. But we can politically and morally bankrupt them. We can’t bankrupt them financially in the short run – they have lots of money. But we can reduce their political power dramatically. When the United Church of Christ, the oldest Protestant denomination in the country – it traces its roots back to the pilgrims – when they say, we don’t want to be invested in these guys, involved with these guys, that counts.
ExxonMobil’s profit motive has done more to lift people from poverty and to enhance life than anything McKibben and his friends have done.
McKibben may also want to look harder at the history of the United Church of Christ before he lauds them as an example. If he wants to tie them to the Pilgrims — and I think he’s accurate there — he should remember that his friends’ earlier churches established religion, enforced blue laws, hanged suspected witches and heretics, taxed non-members to pay the clergy, and generally imposed their ideas of morality on all who lived within their jurisdiction. Take away the hanging part and it still seems to be going on.
The agenda has NEVER been about protecting the environment. It has always been about achieving the Marxist goal of robbing the rich.
Isn’t the name pronounced like “Gibbon”?
Not that I want to insult a lower primate with the comparison.
It’s just that XOM do neither moral nor political banking, They deal in real goods and commodities.
That’s only true if XOM can’t sell future bonds because of the shame attached (or credit rating). Symbolic idiocy loses again.