As world leaders descended on New York City this week for a global summit on climate change, some heirs to the Rockefeller Family fortune used the timing of the event to announce their own plans to divest of fossil fuel holdings.
The Rockefeller Brothers Fund – an $860 million philanthropic organization founded in 1940 – vowed to transfer its fossil fuel investments into renewable energy sources.
The organization is smaller than the more famous Rockefeller Foundation. Both were created by Rockefeller family members who obtained their wealth from John D. Rockefeller, who founded Standard Oil.
“John D Rockefeller, the founder of Standard Oil, moved America out of whale oil and into petroleum,” said a statement by Stephen Heintz, president of the Rockefeller Brothers Fund. “We are quite convinced that if he were alive today, as an astute businessman looking out to the future, he would be moving out of fossil fuels and investing in clean, renewable energy.”
The statement said the Fund is committed to a two-step process to address its desire to divest from investments in fossil fuels, with an immediate focus on coal and tar sands, two of the most intensive sources of carbon emissions. “We are committed to reducing our exposure to coal and tar sands to less than one percent of the total portfolio by the end of 2014,” it said.
More than 800 global investors have outlined plans to pull out a total of $50 billion from fossil fuel investments over the next five years.
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