(By Rick Jones, Presbyterian News Service). The past year has been a busy one for the Committee on Mission Responsibility Through Investment (MRTI), from saying goodbye to long-time coordinator Bill Somplatsky-Jarman to watching events unfold in Standing Rock, North Dakota.
New lead staff Rob Fohr says they’ll be busy again this year, adding they are always challenged by the number and variety of issues on which they and their partners engage, with publicly traded corporations. “More specifically, our directive from the 222nd General Assembly on focused engagement with the oil and gas industry will challenge the committee as we develop strategies for effective engagement and standards for measuring progress in those discussions.”
MRTI is a three agency committee that implements the GA policies on faith-based investing. The committee brings together representatives from the Presbyterian Mission Agency Board, investing agencies of the Board of Pension and Presbyterian Foundation/New Covenant Trust Company, the advocacy committee on women’s and racial ethnic concerns, the social witness policy committee and three at-large members elected by the General Assembly. It is jointly funded by the Presbyterian Mission Agency, Presbyterian Foundation and the Board of Pensions.
Last October, the Synod of the Northeast voted to take immediate steps to divest from the fossil fuel industry. Fohr believes that action will actually help in their dialogues with the fossil fuel companies.
“The fact that the General Assembly voted not to direct the Board of Pensions and the Foundation to divest categorically from fossil fuel companies allows MRTI to stay engaged with these companies from a position of strength,” he said. “However, the fact that other Presbyterian-related entities with invested capital such as mid-councils and congregations are electing to move funds to fossil fuel free products, gives us some leverage to encourage change.”
Fohr says MRTI’s goal is to work with oil and gas companies to adopt policies and strategies that transition them into a low-carbon future.
3 Comments. Leave new
“The fact that the General Assembly voted not to direct the Board of Pensions and the Foundation to divest categorically from fossil fuel companies allows MRTI to stay engaged with these companies from a position of strength,” he said. “However, the fact that other Presbyterian-related entities with invested capital such as mid-councils and congregations are electing to move funds to fossil fuel free products, gives us some leverage to encourage change.”
The only “leverage” the MRTI has is nagging companies to do buisness the way the louisville sluggers want them to do business, which means unless you’re planned parenthood, all other companies are doing it wrong.
Whenever you report or process on anything generated by any entity related to the PCUSA, you must process their bloated sense of self-importance. None more so than MRTI. The market cap or valuation of all publicly traded companies based in the USA is about 75 trillion dollars, that’s with a T. Globally all publicly traded corporations have a value of about 90 Trillion at the end of 2015. If the PCUSA were a publicly traded stock or corporation, it would not appear on the SP 100, not on the SP 500, it would barely register on the Russel 2000. The broadest market index. If you count Board of Pension money the PCUSA is about a 8 billion dollar enterprise, remove such, and you count only Foundation money, their balance sheet, you are talking about 2.5 billion in investments. In comparison, Sears Holding which by all accounts will go bankrupt in about 2 years still has about 5 billion in the bank. The PCUSA as an economic entity is on par with a regional corporation like Pep Boys Auto in the north east or the In and Sheetz markets in central PA on cash value.
Translation, any action or activity of anything the PCUSA does or says, buys, sells, invests in the open capital markets is less than minuscule, it is irrelevant and not even noted on Wall Street. As example, the companies the PCUSA hates and have boycotted currently, Wendy’s is worth 3 times more than the PCUSA, HP and its spin offs, 8 times, CAT about 125. Walmart is about 1300 PCUSAs put together. Buy, sell, hold the PCUSA? I think that is a sell.
For a denomination in rapid decline, it doesn’t seem like a very wise use of time and effort to focus on petroleum industry issues. Better to try to make their churches more attractive to people, before they shut down altogether for lack of sufficient members.