In the second titled 'Time for Big Green to Go Fossil Free' she makes it clear that "plenty of green groups have managed to avoid this mess. Greenpeace, 350.org, Friends of the Earth, Rainforest Action Network, and a host of smaller organizations like Oil Change International and the Climate Reality Project don’t have endowments and don’t invest in the stock market. They also either don’t take corporate donations or place such onerous restrictions on them that extractive industries are easily ruled out. Some of these groups own a few fossil fuel stocks, but only so that they can make trouble at shareholder meetings."
It's important to notice the words 'endowments and invest in the stock market' because this is the central issue in Naomi's articles, the focus of her exhaustive research and the way almost all conservation is done in the western world. The organization behind The American Prarie Reserve, an ambitious undertaking to rewild 3.5 million acres of short grass prairie in the greater Missouri Breaks area, as Richard Manning's book 'Rewilding the West' explains and details has the same dilemma. In order to raise the money necessary to buy up and 'rewild' that vast area hundreds of ranchers must be bought out over the coming years. This will cost an estimated $200, 000, 000. The only folks who've got that kinda dough are very rich folks and understandably even the most altruistic of them doesn't give money away without some conditions attached.
This reality leads most organizations into the world of endowments, which as registered charities are tax deductible and who's investments in the stock market create income, also usually tax deductible, that can be used to run the organization without depleting the donated capital [at least in theory]. Naomi's articles join numerous others lately in the wake of the Carbon Tracker Report and Bill McKibben's Rolling Stone article 'Global Warming's Terrifying New Math' in calling for all these environmental organizations to divest their interests in the fossil fuel industry.
Though this solution sounds good in reality it makes a better slogan than an effective tactic. All these endowments, just like the pension plans and all the various types of investment funds, hire fund managers who's job it is to maximize returns. So, as long as the job of the endowment's managers is maximizing returns within whatever moral parameters that organizations applies, divestment in one aspect of the capitalist matrix, fossil fuels, is meaningless if the money is simply moved to another aspect of capitalism, another part of the consumer culture who's demands drive all economic exchange, including those of the fossil fuel industry. Folks need to stop driving to the mall, stop consuming useless plastic crap, just slow down.
