Re: “Utility’s doubling down on fossil fuels questioned after rolling blackouts” (Dec. 31):

The Associated Press story you published on the Tennessee Valley Authority illustrates an extremely important, but woefully underutilized concept: We are all stakeholders in the policies of big organizations.

The TVA plans to spend billions on new gas plants and pipelines. Those investments will ensure the pumping of tons of carbon dioxide emissions into the atmosphere during the next decades. And this at a time when, in 2021, the International Energy Agency declared that there must be no new investment in fossil fuel projects if we want to reach net zero carbon emissions by 2050.

Such a policy only guarantees furthering the climate crisis we all face, not just TVA customers. It would be bad enough if the TVA policy were the only one in question. But the 60 largest banks in the world have, since the Paris agreement in 2016, financed future fossil fuel production to the tune of $4.6 trillion.

Those banks are counting on short-term profits for their shareholders at the long-term expense of all of us stakeholders. And we, in Maine, unfortunately have our own “representatives” of those errant banks, two of the world’s largest, JPMorgan Chase and Bank of America.

There is an inherent relationship between citizens and their societies’ institutions: We all have a stake in how things work out. And our stake entails a moral obligation on those organizations to honor it. This idea needs to be used in coverage of the policies of big institutions if we are to fully comprehend their consequences.

David Boyer
Belfast

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