Mendocino County’s investment portfolio is worth over half a billion dollars. Some of our tax money is being invested in corporations and institutions that undermine our ethical and moral values. A significant portion of our tax money is invested in corporations and institutions that undermine our ethical and moral values. Due to the complicated and opaque nature of modern finance, it is impossible to know what percentage is in violation of the spirit of our County’s investment policy. However, it is clear that some investments are too egregious to ignore.
View County Investment Reports
Caterpillar
Mendocino County holds $3,430,000 of Caterpillar–A U.S.-based multinational manufacturer that provides heavy equipment to the Israeli military, including the Caterpillar D9 bulldozer which has been used as a weapon of war and was implicated in the death of American activist Rachel Corrie.
Weapons of War
”A US-based multinational manufacturer of construction machinery and equipment. Its products are weaponized for the Israeli military and are used in home demolitions; in the construction of illegal settlement infrastructure, border walls, and military checkpoints; and in military assaults against Palestinians.”
AFSC Investigate
“A U.S. company that provides information on investments has taken Caterpillar off three of its environmentally and socially responsible investment indexes, citing controversy over the Israeli military using its bulldozers in Palestinian territories as one of the reasons.” — June 27, 2012
LA Times
“MSCI Inc. said Caterpillar was downgraded earlier this year because of several concerns, including a January labor dispute in Canada, environmental issues, employee safety and ‘an ongoing controversy associated with use of the company’s equipment in the occupied Palestinian territories.’”
Fox News
Statement from Methodist Church that divested from Caterpillar: “Caterpillar sells its military equipment to Israel through the US Foreign Military Sales Program. Because this equipment is weaponized and used as a weapon in the occupied territories, the sale of Caterpillar bulldozers to the Israeli military violates the US Arms Export Control Act, which prohibits the use of US made machinery or weapons against a civilian population.”
United Methodists for Kairos Response
Royal Bank of Canada
Mendocino County holds $3,000,000 of The Royal Bank of Canada which has financed Palantir, maker of the AI systems used to target Palestinian citizens. Royal Bank of Canada is also the number one financier of the fossil fuel development.
Weapons of War
“Palantir provides their Artificial Intelligence (AI) predictive system to Israeli security forces, to identify people in occupied Palestine.The Royal Bank of Canada has over 2 M shares valued at over $56 M USD in Palantir holdings.”
“The Royal Bank of Canada (RBC) has invested $2 million in the cybersecurity research center at Ben-Gurion University (BGU), RBC and BGN Technologies, the technology transfer company of BGU, announced. Funding for the partnership between the financial institution and the university will support the development of adversarial artificial intelligence (AI), including machine learning-based cyber mitigation techniques, BGU said in a statement.” — July 29, 2018
Fossil Fuel
“A report from a coalition of environmental groups shows that Royal Bank of Canada was the biggest fossil fuel financier in the world last year after providing over $42 billion US in funding.”
Canadian Broadcasting Corporation
“Canadian banks remain among the biggest backers of fossil fuels in the world and are lagging behind in clean energy financing. RBC is under investigation by Canada’s Competition Bureau for allegations of “greenwashing.” Securities complaints in Ontario and Quebec for misleading information about their sustainable financing activities have also been filed against all of the Big Five.”
Stand.earth
“RBC pumped over USD$42.1 billion in 2022 in fossil fuel companies in the last fiscal year – an increase over 2021 levels. In total, since the Paris Climate Agreement was adopted in 2016, RBC has financed more than USD $253.98 billion to fossil fuel companies.”
Greenpeace
Bank of America
Mendocino holds $4,600,000 of Bank of America, which is under scrutiny for over $500,000,000 of investments in Israeli Defense Contractor Elbit. It is also a huge financier of fossil fuel development.
Weapons of War
Elbit
“Israeli defense electronics company Elbit Systems (ESLT.TA expects further sales gains this year, it said on Tuesday after reporting fourth-quarter revenue boosted by higher ammunition sales to Israel for its war against Hamas militants. The company supplies hundreds of products to Israel’s Defense Ministry, including unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), artillery, munitions and electronic warfare systems. Elbit, one of Israel's largest defense contractors, supplies products ranging from drones to training simulators, artillery fire control systems and surveillance equipment and has seen orders surge amid a rise in defense spending worldwide.
“Although Elbit has benefited from strong demand due to global insecurity, its shares have been under pressure on investor concerns over the war in Gaza and a wave of global protests aimed at pressuring big institutions to cut investments in Israel.”
Reuters
Fossil Fuels
“Bank of America for example, which ranks third on the 2023 list of worst fossil fuel funders: in addition to being the top financier of Amazon oil & gas companies in this report, they dropped their exclusions on Arctic drilling, thermal coal, and coal-fired power plants; they have neither energy ratio disclosures nor near-term absolute emission targets, and they abandoned the Equator principles. At the time of the report publication, they are the only bank major exhibiting all of these climate policy failures at once.”
Forbes
“Our new report, Complicit: Bank of America’s Role in Fossil Fuel Expansion and the Violation of Human Rights, explores how badly Bank of America is failing on human rights by failing on their climate commitments. By financing fossil fuel expansion at scale in a time of climate crisis, this bank, and many others, have made themselves complicit, by definition, in the violation of human rights of millions today, and many more in years to come.”
Rainforest Action Network
"Next on our list of top US banks funding global warming, we discuss Bank of America (BofA) – the second largest US bank and fourth on the list of top fossil fuel financiers in the world. While BofA isn’t the top offender when it comes to fossil fuel funding,… it has contributed significantly to the $5.5 trillion in funding that big banks have provided to the fossil fuel industry since the Paris Agreement was adopted in 2016"
GreenPortfolio