Much Ado in Cooperstown, N.Y., Over Vote to Dump Fossil Fuel Stocks
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Louis Allstadt at Otsego Lake in Cooperstown, N.Y. A former oil executive and a town trustee for Cooperstown, he is credited with influencing a move to divest a pension fund of fossil fuel stocks.CreditEmma Tannenbaum for The New York Times
The trustees of Cooperstown, N.Y., hardly expected their village (population 1,834) to emerge as a flash point in a national debate over climate change and socially responsible investing.
But when they voted in October to divest the pension fund they oversee of all fossil fuel holdings, Cooperstown became the first community in the nation to do so — not just coal (like Stanford University), but also oil and gas.
Just as the divestiture movement has roiled college campuses across the country, pitting environmental activists against college endowment managers, the trustees’ decision caused a stir locally. The town treasurer and tax collector publicly opposed the move, and a village resident took to the local newspaper to suggest the trustees were indulging their own social and political causes at the expense of prudent portfolio management…
Much Ado in Cooperstown, N.Y., Over Vote to Dump Fossil Fuel Stocks
