College should reinvest in green funds

Letter to the editor: Bowdoin must focus on divestment before endowment

To the Editor: I would have been satisfied if our meeting with President Mills yielded a commitment to formally consider our proposal to divest Bowdoin’s endowment from fossil fuels. Instead, we left with our heads full of “stay the course” rhetoric. President Mills doubts the claim of the Aperio Group, an investment management firm that published a report finding that divestment poses virtually no risk to endowment returns. I trust these facts, over the profit versus environmental responsibility paradigm, because my Bowdoin education does not accept convention as truth.

Letter to the editor: Bowdoin must lead in energy reduction

Back in the early ’80s we started to hear about the disturbing increase in carbon dioxide levels measured atop the Hawaiian volcano Mona Loa. Then not much later, fellow scientists talked increasingly about the implications of this increase, and the likely effects on our climate. Public awareness at the time was minimal at best, and even most climate scientists failed to adjust their living habits to provide an example toward a reduction in carbon dioxide emission. Times have certainly changed in that there is now far more awareness of the consequences of increased carbon dioxide emissions. Clearly we have far to go, but there is a change afoot. But this change will drag on slowly, too slowly, until there is a realization of a sense of personal responsibility.

Letter to the editor

College should reinvest in green funds

February 7, 2013

To the Editor:

Following on Auden Schendler’s January 24th piece calling for Bowdoin to take action on climate change, I am writing to express my strong support for his arguments.

I first advocated Bowdoin take steps in this direction when I was editor of the Orient in the mid-1990s.
Reading Auden’s article brought home how little has been done since I wrote those editorials.

My hope is that the College will take steps in three areas: minimizing its own environmental footprint, building a leading edge sustainability curriculum, and investing the endowment with a sustainability focus.

Since I am the co-founder of a fund that invests primarily in clean energy companies, I will add a reference that the Board may want to review the next time it allocates to new fund managers.

There is a recent essay in the book “Evolutions in Sustainable Investment” about the investment philosophy of Generation Investment Management, founded in 2004 by former Goldman Sachs executive David Blood and former Vice President Al Gore.

By March 2011, the authors found, the firm's Global Equity Fund "had delivered a positive 17.38 percent outperformance over the benchmark since inception in the middle of 2008."

We are fortunate to live in a time when we as investors can do good at the same time as doing well.

Sincerely,
Zeb Rice ’94
Managing Partner at Angeleno Group, LLC

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