If the intricacies of Wall St. are difficult enough for investors driven only by profit, then for the environmentally-inclined investor, they are nearly inscrutable. Large funds may hide dozens of companies that do great damage to the Earth’s resources, while no one has the time to investigate individual firms for their corporate responsibility. Luckily, Business Week reviews the five largest ‘green’ funds from an angle we rarely hear, that of the stockholder looking for the next big market movement.

Environmental stocks are fraught with trade-offs and contradictions; even the Sierra Club invested in two large casino companies, businesses that rely on millions of travelers flying into the neon-lit desert. At least one of the funds held a block of ExxonMobil stock, an oil company trying to be greener but certainly known for its soiled reputation.

Still, the future has great promise: eco-friendly investing is slowly becoming part of people’s overall stock strategy, just as a ‘green’ lifestyle is slowly gaining followers around the world. Environmentalists need to understand that the free market is not something to be feared, or even reviled, but is just another tool, a necessary tool, to achieving any sort of global change.

Link to Business Week – Five for the Money

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See Also: Green China,China Green Investment Stumbles,Green Office Supplies: Part II,

This entry was posted by Jeffrey Goodman on Friday, March 2nd, 2007 at 7:30 am and is filed under Environment, Social Change. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.