Archive for the ‘Advocacy’ Category

2008 Advocacy Review

Monday, October 6th, 2008

For our 2008 advocacy efforts, we’re pleased to report a fair amount of progress — never as much as we’d like (we’d like superhero powers), but enough to confirm that shareholder activism remains a potent tool for change.
Climate change. Our shareholder resolution at ConocoPhillips requesting a report on the environmental and social impacts of tar […]

Boundaries of Responsibility

Friday, October 3rd, 2008

You’ve heard about conflict diamonds. Now get ready for “conflict coltan.” Coltan is an ore mined in several countries including the war-torn Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). Processed coltan yields valuable tantalum, a component in electric capacitors found in cell phones, laptops, DVD players and game consoles.
But tantalum doesn’t come cheap. The U.N. Security Council […]

Big Coal Losing Momentum in the U.S.

Thursday, April 10th, 2008

Poor coal. For so long, it has gotten away with being the largest contributor (41 percent) to global CO2 emissions from energy use, a widespread public health hazard by virtue of lead, mercury and other pollutants, the source of black lung disease, and now we can add deforestation to its achievements. “Coal will be coal,” […]

Turn Down the Heat - It’s Getting Warmer

Thursday, April 10th, 2008

With all the talk out there about energy efficiency and re­duced use, I can’t help but think of my mom, telling us kids to put on a sweater, the heat would not go up. I laugh at the per­son I’ve become, as I tell my own kids the same thing, adding the environmental commentary that […]

The Thanksgiving Column

Wednesday, January 30th, 2008

Thanks (presumably) to 34,000 emails vehemently opposing the repeal of shareholders’ right to file non-binding ballot proposals, social investors dodged a bullet this fall. On November 28, the Securities and Exchange Commission failed to follow through on its earlier hints that the rules governing shareholder proposals might be significantly tightened, even to the point of […]

Uncovering Slavery in Steel

Wednesday, January 30th, 2008

How far up a supply chain should a company be held accountable?
In Carajas in Brazil’s eastern Amazon region, work is scarce and poverty and lawlessness are widespread. Opportunistic hacienda owners lure the desperate and unemployed to distant charcoal camps with promises of work, wages and shelter. Once at the camp, the owners levy illegal […]

Putting China on the Spot for Sudan

Wednesday, January 23rd, 2008

Trillium Asset Management Corporation (”Trillium”) will be working with two nonprofit organizations this fall to keep up the economic pressure on the Government of Sudan (GoS).
The “selective divestment” model - developed by the Sudan Divestment Task Force adopted by Trillium - focuses on companies in strategic sectors, whose tax payments or royalties provide major revenue […]

Reach Out and Hush Someone

Wednesday, August 29th, 2007

Is AT&T’s Censorship of Pearl Jam a Harbinger of a Less Free Internet?

Banks Warming to Climate Action

Tuesday, June 19th, 2007

The competition among banks this year to announce ever larger investments to fight climate change brings to my mind the famous reply given by legendary criminal Willie Sutton when asked why he robbed banks: “That’s where the money is.” That’s one of the prime reasons Trillium Asset Management Corporate teamed up with Friends of the […]

Sweatshop Activists Turn Attention To Purchasing Practices

Tuesday, June 19th, 2007

Roughly 15 years ago it became very clear that sweatshop labor was a widespread problem in U.S. corporations’ supply chains. In 1992, Dateline News found nine-year-old children making private label clothing for Wal-Mart. The National Labor Committee exposed unsafe working conditions and child labor at Gap suppliers in Central American plants. A succession […]


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