SUPPORTING STATEMEMT: In 2022, activist investors driven by a radical climate catastrophist agenda forced Costco to adopt unrealistic greenhouse gas emissions reductions goals, culminating in net-zero emissions by 2050 or sooner.2 In imposing these targets upon the Company, however, it does not appear that these activist shareholders have fully considered the risks that decarbonization on politically driven schedules might entail.
Claims about the need for decarbonization at all, but especially by some activist-generated date certain, are based on a long series of assumptions that are either counterfactual or insufficiently examined. For decades, for instance, claims have been made that action must be taken before some date, or it will be too late.3 If those claims were right, it's too late for decarbonization to matter now, so we should be building up economic resources to deal with climate change. If they were wrong, then the odds are high that current claims are also wrong.
Costco's decarbonization will be meaningless if other countries do not follow the same decarbonization schedules, and there is abundant evidence that they will not.4 The United States government has never mandated net-zero by statute or authorized regulatory action,5 and is unlikely ever to do so; this contravenes the assumptions of "stranded asset" analysis. If decarbonization is neither required nor technologically feasible, forcing the Company to arbitrarily reduce greenhouse gas emissions — including emissions outside of its control — will undoubtedly increase operating costs and harm shareholder investments. All relevant considerations should therefore be fully and objectively examined and reported on publicly.
Recent forensic research has demonstrated that "[r]eplacing an energy system overwhelmingly based on hydrocarbons with one centered predominantly on wind and solar would make the world unambiguously poorer and have a negative impact on the lives of billions of people in the world's poorest nations."6 Making the world's poor poorer to advance the policy preferences of some misinformed wealthy climate activists is the height of social injustice as well as being a terrible business strategy. Costco must examine its premises honestly and fully.