[Themaintainers] {Ideas for Varun} Themaintainers Digest, Vol 74, Issue 9

[Tim MacDonald]

Varun

Thank you for these good thoughts, and your important work.

Can I invite you to consider with us if stewardship might prove to be a better way than speculation for giving Nature a voice in human social decision making?

The stewardship we seek to activate is a potency latent in the structure of Pensions & Endowments as the institutional fiduciary owners of ten of trillions, collectively, worldwide, of intergenerational fiduciary money. The intergenerational characteristics of fiduciary money makes it a proxy for Nature, and our Future, in how we decide the shape of the right economy for keeping a good society ongoing into a dignified future. A dignified future, of course, includes one in which we work with Nature, and not against Nature, on energy and other things, including water and oceans!

The instrument of that stewardship is the equity payback investment structures I referenced. These are innovations upon the proven reliable practice common in Institutional Real Estate and also US-style tax credit transfer partnerships.

We, too, are looking at the law as a way to break the prevailing neoliberal monopoly mindset of extraction and externalization through securitized financialization for institutional speculation with fiduciary money, by alleging that participation in such financialized extraction and externalization is a violation of the fiduciary duty of institutional fiduciary money that is causing harm to society, Nature and our future. They must stop.  Some of the legal theories we are exploring, in addition to fiduciary duty straight up, include pubic nuisance, public trust, product liability/untaken safer alternative, breach of contract and fraud.

The alternative is to require fiduciary money to invest in enterprise and the economy, directly, and not derivatively, through negotiated agreements on sharing in the cash that flows through the flourish and fade of the social contract between enterprise and popular choice (think brand loyalty), prioritized for fiduciary sufficiency and social and environmental justice in the conduct of commerce.  This focuses the action of investing fiduciary money on the search for the right answer to these two questions. WHO can and should fiduciary money negotiate WITH? WHAT can and should fiduciary money negotiate FOR?  Seeking the answers to these questions empowers fiduciary money to speak with a voice for Nature, and our future, as a proxy for Nature, in choosing our future.  It also opens up space in that conversation for each of us and all of us to exercise our own personal agency in considering the answers to these questions as reasonable people whose common sense sets the evidentiary standards for prudent loyalty of fiduciary power to fiduciary purpose.

I imagine participation in these conversations will fall within the field of interest of at least some in this discussion group, as responsible maintaining must surely also include prudent decommissioning from time to time, as times change, and humanity evolves prosperous adaptation to life’s constant changes, making new learning, new technologies and new enterprises more popular as better fit to changing times, while letting previously popular learning, technologies and enterprises fade into history as a good fit to an earlier time.

The prevailing, mainstream neoliberal philosophy of securitized and financialized extraction and externalization ignores that fade, insisting that it does not, in fact exist, until we crash into it, recklessly and irresponsibly booming and busting our way through creative destruction.

Surely, prudent stewardship of the flourish and fade is a better, more maintainable, way.

Tim

Bankofnature.eco
Fiduciary for the Future on LinkedIn

> On Apr 27, 2022, at 7:57 PM, Varun Adibhatla <varun.adibhatla at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> Tim,
> Thank you! This is a very abundantly imagined thesis!
> 
> As someone named after a vedic god of water & oceans, I'm compelled by tradition and ancestry to confer god-like agency onto nature. A deeply spiritual proposition.
> To confer actual financial agency on nature, we need to take a hard look at the neoliberal bias against nature.
> That neoliberal calculus has led to desecrations such as speculative financialization and the weaponization of well-intentioned environmental laws <https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2021/03/signature-environmental-law-hurts-housing/618264/>.
> 
> Here's where I look to indigenous calculus. Some signals, maybe more out there?
> Jason Flores-Williams sued the state of Colorado and Gov. John Hickenlooper   on behalf of the Colorado River and its ecosystem for violating the river’s “right to exist, flourish, regenerate..."
> "In Ecuador, the constitution now declares <https://dotearth.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/09/29/ecuador-constitution-grants-nature-rights/?mcubz=3> that nature “has the right to exist, persist, maintain and regenerate its vital cycles.”
> In New Zealand, officials declared  that a river <https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/mar/16/new-zealand-river-granted-same-legal-rights-as-human-being> used by the Maori tribe of Whanganui in the North Island to be a legal person that can sue if it is harmed.
> A court in the northern Indian state of Uttarakhand has called the Ganges <https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/mar/21/ganges-and-yamuna-rivers-granted-same-legal-rights-as-human-beings> and its main tributary, the Yamuna, to be living human entities." (via NYT <https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/26/us/does-the-colorado-river-have-rights-a-lawsuit-seeks-to-declare-it-a-person.html>)
> 
> re: equity payback investment structures that align enterprise cash flows with fiduciary minimums and fiduciary values, of a dignified future in a prosperous present.
> Any examples that you could offer? 
> Outside of the Green Liberty Bonds by the CT green bank <https://www.ctgreenbankbonds.com/connecticut-green-bank-ct/i6126> (debt instruments), are there any equity instruments out there linked to a dignified / prosperous future?
> 
> I've been thinking of ways to securitize early adoption of decarbonized consumption.
> The concept is simple / Carbon avoided today is more valuable than carbon avoided later. and sets up incentive and payback mechanisms.
> A household that purchases an EV today ought to be granted shares whose value is linked to the Global Carbon Budget <https://www.globalcarbonproject.org/carbonbudget/21/infographics.htm> that estimates that CO2 cuts of 1.4 Gigatons are needed every year to reach net zero by 2050
> 
> Lastly, Atmos Financial is a banking services platform where 100% of your account balance is used to fund climate-positive infrastructure to decarbonize the economy.
> 
> On Wed, Apr 27, 2022 at 9:06 AM Tim MacDonald <timmacdonald1 at me.com <mailto:timmacdonald1 at me.com>> wrote:
> Varun writes in a recent post:
> 
>> On Apr 26, 2022, at 6:03 PM, Varun Adibhatla <varun.adibhatla at gmail.com <mailto:varun.adibhatla at gmail.com>> wrote:
>> 
>> To decarbonize, we need to deploy capital in a way that likely has not been witnessed before.
>> 
> 
> Two things to explore more closely in this statement.
> 
> One, we do not need to decarbonize. We need to completely redesign and restructure our entire global energy economy, to replace energy extraction from hydrocarbons, which is pushing earth’s habitats out of human-friendly zones, with new energy choices that will not change earth’s habitats.
> 
> Two, YES we will “need to deploy capital in a way that likely has not been witnessed before”.  That way must be a fiduciary way, putting an end to financialization for institutional speculation and instead directing the tens of trillions of institutional intergenerational fiduciary money aggregated into Pensions & Endowments, collectively, worldwide, into enterprise and the economy directly, through evergreen equity payback investment structures that align enterprise cash flows with fiduciary minimums and fiduciary values, of a dignified future in a prosperous present.
> 
> The first place we need to deploy Fiduciary Money through equity paybacks is in financing the restructuring of our global energy economy to resolve the climate crisis.
> 
> Tim MacDonald
> 
> Bankofnature.eco
> 
> 
> -- 
> Thanks,
> Varun

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