Green Lights Aug. 8: Top stories this week
Don't miss a single story from the best of Callaway Climate Insights.
. . . Welcome back to Green Lights. Here’s our roundup of the best of Callaway Climate Insights. This week, David Callaway weighs in on this week’s shocks to America’s markets credibility, and on Tesla shareholders’ eternal faith in Elon Musk. And, Mark Hulbert writes, voter apathy is an issue for climate-conscious investors. The Callaway Climate Insights team is taking a short summer break next week. We’ll be back on Aug. 18. Have a great week and please subscribe to support our climate finance journalism.
. . . . President Donald Trump’s firing of a government functionary because he disliked the monthly jobs data last week was a shock to America’s markets credibility, but it was no surprise to climate investors who endured a far worse attack only days before. The White House has been systematically scrubbing the U.S. government of any reliable data if it doesn’t go along with the narrative of everything being great, a practice right out of Hans Christian Andersen’s “The Emperor’s New Clothes” or George Orwell’s “1984.”
. . . . The advent of pass-through voting in shareholder proxy votes over the past several years has been slow and replete with technology challenges, but in the end the success of the system set up by the biggest asset managers in response to climate advocates depends on individual shareholders caring enough to vote, writes Mark Hulbert.
. . . . To be a Tesla TSLA 0.00%↑ investor has always been an exercise in heart over mind, driven by a passion not just for the pioneering electric vehicles themselves but for the mysterious and unmeasurable abilities of one Elon Musk, writes David Callaway. Not since Steve Jobs has any celebrity CEO had such a hold on shareholder fans. Musk’s new compensation package is designed to keep him around at least another two years. By then, we hope to know whether there really is any substance behind the myth.
. . . . Texas justice comes for Wall Street. A Texas judge this week gave the green light to a lawsuit by the Trump administration that accuses some of Wall Street’s largest asset managers of using climate change arguments to manipulate local energy markets to push up consumer prices and increase their own profits. David Callaway writes that to frame environmental concerns as market manipulation is a masterstroke of political spin made even more dangerous by that particular form of Texas justice that is currently riveting the country with the state legislator’s gerrymandering scandal. No doubt the Wall Street giants will prevail, but not without enduring months or years more of legal abuse.
. . . . Tariff warnings to U.S. pharmaceutical companies this week chilled the industry, especially after executives watched their counterparts in other businesses provide a stark preview in second-quarter earnings of the billions of dollars in profit hits they expect to come in the next few quarters. U.S. automakers took the lead in forecasting, with just the Big Three alone predicting up to $7 billion in hits to earnings for the rest of the year. Ford F 0.00%↑ CEO Jim Farley said that long-term tariffs would result in a structural shift in the global auto industry to regional markets in Europe, Asia, South America and the U.S. where manufacturers produce and sell vehicles on a local level to offset trade costs.
. . . . British banking giant Barclays Plc BCS 0.00%↑ became the second large UK bank to depart the shrinking Net Zero Banking Alliance, following HSBC last month — and most of the large U.S. and Canadian banking giants earlier this year. Ironically, David Callaway writes, funding for fossil fuel projects in the first half of this year shrank by 25% as oil and gas companies reduced spending on development projects amid lackluster market prices and a glut of oil supply this year. Market timing, it seems, can be a challenge for even the biggest investors.
More greenery . . . .
Plan ahead for peak leaf peeping: 2025 Fall Foliage Color Map (Old Famer’s Almanac)
‘Novel entities’: Chemical pollution a threat comparable to climate change (The Guardian)
Long-lost treasure: Climate change is revealing and destroying archeological treasures (USA Today)
That bites: Rare tropical disease spreading among U.S. wildlife (STAT News)
End of the world: Scientists say there might, just might, be a way out (Popular Mechanics)
It’s accelerating: Is climate change affecting your car insurance rates? (Econews)