Rajiv Shah, then with the Obama administration, speaks in Monrovia, Liberia, in 2014. Shah leads The Rockefeller Foundation, which has pledged to divest from fossil fuels. The pledge makes the Rockefeller Foundation the largest U.S. foundation to join this divestment movement in the interest of slowing man-made climate change’s negative effects on coastlines and in contributing to weather extremes. Among other divestors, New York State’s influential $226 billion pension fund, one of the world’s largest, has said it will eliminate many of its fossil-fuel stocks in the next five years. “Burning fossil fuels is not necessary to sustain our economy and economic growth over the long run — and it’s detrimental to our climate future,” Rajiv Shah, the president of the Rockefeller Foundation, told CNN Business. “It helps to collectively put our thumb on the scale towards a more sustainable future. That’s our hope. That’s our aspiration,” said Shah, who previously led the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) during the Obama administration. The foundation’s move is a symbolic shift. The endowment was largely built from the proceeds of Standard Oil, a company that at its peak controlled more than 90% of petroleum products in the U.S. For […]
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