The Contrarian Investor: Profits vs principles

Profits vs principles

I have very sad taste in holiday reading. Last week, while sweltering in the glorious autumn heat in Morocco, my travelling companions idled away their spare afternoon hours reading pacey thrillers, while yours truly was transfixed by a book on energy policy (The Carbon Crunch by Dieter Helm), and a longish report on ESG investing.

The Carbon Crunch is a fascinating book – well worth the look of horror on travelling companions’ faces – and highlights a huge array of challenges, not least that if we want to really slow down climate change, the big difference within the next 20 years will be made by ditching coal and switching to natural gas as quickly as possible. This radical conclusion – that the best hope for climate change is another hydrocarbon fuel – stuck in my mind as I read a paper entitled From Stockholder to Stakeholder by another bunch of academics from Oxford, as well as London-based investors Arabesque...