March 24, 2023
Media Contact: Melissa Garriga | [email protected]
CODEPINK Responds to Larry Fink; Announces Resolution for BlackRock’s Annual Shareholders Meeting.
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: Last week, Larry Fink, the CEO of BlackRock, published his annual letter to investors. As expected, he filled the letter with greenwashing hypocrisy that we must address. BlackRock continues to be the planet’s biggest private funder of the war machine and of the climate crisis. Its investment vehicle for US “Defense” and Aerospace firms facilitates the flow of billions of dollars from investors into Raytheon, Lockheed Martin, and Northrop Grumman.
Fink claims this supercharging of war crimes and military emissions is merely a passive fulfillment of the company’s “fiduciary duties,” holding investors’ best interests at heart. Meanwhile, he and the rest of the profit-driven suits at BlackRock clearly have a choice whether to divest from Lockheed and prevent further civilian deaths in Yemen and the world over.
The whole “fiduciary duty” bit is laughable when you see that BlackRock itself (not its clients) is the number two shareholder of Lockheed Martin; therefore, a major war profiteer, directly fueling humanitarian crises. And yet, Fink’s only reference to war in his letter is the war in Ukraine, where he has nobly committed to help direct investments in the wake of wartime destruction — which will further fill BlackRock’s coffers. Fink and BlackRock are making a killing off of killing at every stage of the war economy.
We are no longer “inching” towards climate collapse. Corporate giants like BlackRock (not to mention our own dirty-energy President who just approved the Willow Project) are dragging us along in leaps and bounds. BlackRock is the second largest corporate investor in coal. (Yes, coal! Our dirtiest energy source! In 2023!)
CODEPINK is thrilled to announce that we have introduced a resolution for BlackRock’s annual shareholder meeting, which calls on the asset manager to research and publish an impact report on the human cost of weapons and aerospace companies’ climate-killing operations. The “War Profiteers Climate Report” resolution will, for the first time, hold BlackRock’s runaway investment vehicle to account for its contribution to climate change.
“We know the climate and militarism crises aren’t going to be solved by corporations regulating themselves. We need wide-scale system change to actually dismantle the war economy that has brought us to this point.” CODEPINK organizer, Teddy Ogborn.
The benefits of such an impact report reach every single human and living thing on this planet. The resolution even makes it clear that climate change “is of particular concern to shareholders themselves, whose own well-being and posterity are put at risk by the worsening climate crisis.”
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