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Comment by emckay | Hacker News Reader

I quit my job last month to work full time on (what I think is) an under-explored area of climate change: how institutional investors block shareholder proposals calling for firms to adopt more climate-friendly policies. I have just published the first bit of research with data on how 500+ funds from the big 3 fund managers voted on climate change-related proposals in 2018: https://voting.greengovernance.org .

Later this year, I'm planning to launch a "governance-first" ETF that gives investors the same exposure as other funds but is much more aggressive in fighting climate change.

I'd love any feedback! Feel free to email me at <hn-username>@greengovernance.org

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Some ideas

-Which consumer product companies still use a lot of plastic packaging vs those already use bio-degradable packaging?

-Which heavy-industry manufacturing companies use coal or diesel as the main source of energy in their factories vs those use renewable energy source?

-Any company forbid their executives to fly excessively whether in private jet or business/first class? How many miles per year they travel ? It's simply not environmentally friendly when video conferencing should be effective in 90% of the cases?

Thanks! Those are all interesting questions -- and also quite hard to answer without a lot of research into each individual company.

One thing my fund will push for is more consistent and granular emissions disclosures across firms so that shareholders have a better idea of where firms are "spending" their emissions and identify inefficiencies.

No feedback, but thank you for doing this!

I think this is great! I’ve moved money from VTSAX to Vanguard’s ESG funds, despite big concerns about their governance voting. There’s nothing inherently incompatible about climate friendly voting and index funds, so I wish you the best of luck.

It seems the search is only by name. Is it possible to add a view that shows the funds sorted by which ones are most friendly to climate change proposals?

Is there somewhere one could follow your work for updates?

You can sign up for our email newsletter at https://tinyletter.com/GreenGovernance or follow on Twitter https://twitter.com/GreenGovernance

Woah! Respect for what you are doing and more power to you!

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