Former NASA climate scientist James Hansen will attempt to persuade billionaire businessman Warren Buffett to become a climate change champion on Saturday, while seeking his endorsement of a revenue-neutral “carbon fee,” the top climate expert said Thursday.
He will make his appeal in defense of a climate change resolution that will come up for a vote during Berkshire Hathaway’s annual shareholders meeting in Omaha on Saturday.
Hansen said on a call Thursday with reporters that he will make two points in his appeal: Global warming is causing irreversible damage to the Earth’s environmental; and placing a fee on carbon emissions is the best solution to tackle the crisis.
Global warming is a “danger we hand young people. We hand them a system out of control,” Hansen said, adding that the climate is reaching a point where a number of species will be committed to extinction if action isn’t taken, in addition to potentially irreversible effects of sea-level rise.
He argues that his idea of placing a “fee” on emissions causing the Earth’s temperature to rise, as opposed to a “tax,” would result in far better outcomes than a cap-and-trade market-based approach. Hansen said the fee idea, which would occur at the point of extraction and be revenue neutral, would have buy-in from both conservatives and liberals.
Buffett’s endorsement would be “very helpful,” he said.
The Nebraska Peace Foundation sponsored the resolution, which calls on Berkshire Hathaway to produce a report on the need for insurance companies to address the issue. Buffett has already said addressing addressing climate change does not make business sense for his company’s insurance division. And his board of directors is advising a no-vote on the resolution. But that doesn’t matter, says the peace foundation and the activist group Bold Nebraska.
Mark Vasina, a foundation board member, said on the call that proxy votes are already in and the resolution will not succeed. The point of Hansen making the appeal is to use the resolution to gain the attention of one of the most charismatic businessmen in the world, in the hope that he will take on the issue of global warming.
The Berkshire meeting, for the first time, will be webcast, Vasina notes, saying they will have a global audience in making the appeal. He said their resolution is the only one before the board, so they will have Buffett’s undivided attention.
Vasina said the germ of their plan began to take shape a few years ago when Buffett said he had no problem with wealthy people paying more in taxes, saying his secretary pays more than he does and he is one of the wealthiest men on the planet. Based on that, they wondered how he would address the issue of climate change.
Vasina said Buffett is a Democrat with “a very kindly manner and he is a great philanthropist,” but he had never gotten involved in the issue of climate change.
They had appealed to him directly to address climate change, but Buffett was reticent. So, Vasina said the peace foundation chose to rally their meager activist dollars to buy one share of Berkshire stock for $180,000 to submit a resolution before the company. The stock price is currently well above $200,000.
“It took us two years to get to the point to submit the resolution,” he said. Vasina said Hansen was recruited, along with insurance expert Jim Jones at Illinois State University, to make the case for why it is necessary to take action on climate change.
