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your money, your life, your choice ・ Harvard invests in water

“‘Because we believe its physical products are going to be in increasing demand in the global economy over the coming decades,”

Harvard Management Co., the Harvard University endowment manager, likes the natural-resources asset class.

“In a warming planet, few resources will be more affected than water, as droughts, storms and changes in evaporation alter a flow critical for drinking, farming, and industry.

“Even though there aren’t many ways to make financial investments in water, investors are starting to place bets.

“Buying arable land with access to it is one way.

“In California’s Central Coast, ‘the best property with the best water will sell for record-breaking prices,’ says JoAnn Wall, a real-estate appraiser specializing in vineyards, ‘and properties without adequate water will suffer in value.'”

The Harvard Management Co. has, since 2012, been buying agricultural land, with rights to sources of water, on California’s Central Coast. The idea was pitched to Harvard by agricultural investment advisory firm Grapevine Capital Partners LLC, founded by Matt Turrentine, formerly of his family’s Central Coast grape-brokerage business, and James Ontiveros, a local vineyard manager.

“Harvard’s investing guidelines say respecting local resource rights are of increasing importance ‘in the coming decades as competition for scarce resources, such as arable land and water, intensifies due to increasing global population, climate change, and food consumption.’”

“Investors who see agriculture as a proxy for betting on water include Michael Burry, a hedge-fund investor who wager against the U.S. housing market was chronicled in the book and movie ‘The Big Short.’ In a 2015 New York Magazine interview, Mr. Burry was quoted as saying: ‘What became clear to me is that food is the way to invest in water. That is, grow food in water-rich areas and transport it for sale in water-poor areas.'”

“In California vineyards, the water-proxy math is compelling. When grapes are harvested, about 75% of their weight is water. Owning vineyards effectively turns water into revenue.”

“Kat Taylor, an environmentalist and wife of hedge-fund billionaire and liberal activist Tom Steyer, resigned earlier this year from Harvard’s board of overseers in protest of the endowment’s investments in things such as fossil fuels and water holdings she says threaten the human right to water.

“‘It may, in the short run, be about developing vineyard properties,’ she says of Harvard’s California investments. ‘In the long run, it was a claim on water.'”

See:

“Harvard Amasses Vineyards – and Water. A bet on climate change in California gives it agricultural land and the rights below it,” Russell Gold, The Wall Street Journal, 11 December 2018

“In Drought-Stricken Central California, Harvard Hopes to Turn Water Into Wine,” Eli W. Burnes and William L. Wang, The Harvard Crimson, 13 April 2018

“Michael Burry, Real-Life Market Genius From The Big Short, Thinks Another Financial Crisis Is Looming,” Jessica Pressler, New York Magazine, 28 December 2018

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your money, your life, your choice ・ the painting that did not sell

The painting that did not sell.

While there may be a well-established “cartel of taste” (see Anna Louie Sussman’s article “Why You Can’t Always Buy a Work of Art Just Because You Have the Cash,” @artsy, 12 December 2018), market stakeholders can and sometimes do display independent judgment.

Gerhard Richter’s “Schädel” (oil on canvas), the first of a series of eight skull paintings painted in 1983, was held in the same collection for 30 years after a last public exhibition in 1988.

Based on a photograph taken by Richter himself, the painting demonstrates a “dialogue between painterly abstraction and photo-realist representation that had been simmering across separate stands of Richter’s practice for nearly two decades.”

This painting led the Post-War and Contemporary Art Evening Sale held at Christie’s London on 4 October 2018.

With an unpublished estimate, the painting was expected to sell for between £12 and £18 million (US$15 – US$23 million).

Bidding reached £11.5 million. The painting was not allowed to change hands.

Note also the instance of Edward Hopper’s 1972 painting, “Portrait of an Artist (Pool with Two Figures)” that sold at Christie’s in New York on 15 November. It closed narrowly, at what may have been a precisely agreed threshold of $80 million – with what appeared to be Christie’s bidding against itself to reach the sales price.

See:

“Why You Can’t Always Buy a Work of Art Just Because You Have the Cash,” Anna Louie Sussman, Artsy, 12 December 2018

“Seen for the first time in 30 years: Gerhard Richter’s ‘Schädel’ (‘Skull’),” Christie’s

“Gerhard Richter ‘Skull’ to Headline Christie’s Sale in London,” Fang Block, Barron’s, 4 September 2018

“Rare Richter’s a Bust, but Christie’s Moves $25.9 M. Bacon, $21 M. Fontana at London Sales,” Judd Tully, Artnews, 4 October 2018

 

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your money, your life, your choice | fashion & CO2

“It’s really about bringing everyone together as an industry, and instead of having a few people talk about it, it’s having everyone talk about it and the leaders… actually taking responsibility, putting our money where our mouth is and making an amazing change together.”

– Stella McCartney, founder of eponymous fashion company and brand

Consumers, investors, and the fashion industry, when deciding how to spend and where to put their money, are demonstrating a commitment to changing lifestyle choices, changing behaviors, redefining value, reducing emissions of atmospheric CO2 and greenhouse gases, and mitigating human-induced climate change.

The broader textile, clothing and fashion industry have worked during 2018 to specify ways in which, drawing on methodologies from the Science-Based Targets Initiative, they can direct themselves towards a holistic commitment to climate action, achieving net-zero emissions of atmospheric CO2 and greenhouse gases by 2050, while expanding economic opportunity and driving economic competitiveness and innovation.

The apparel and footwear industries together accounted in 2016 for an estimated 8.1% of global climate impacts with emissions of 3,990 million metric tons CO2eq (including emissions generated by processes used for raw material extraction, raw material processing, manufacturing, assembly, packaging production, transportation/distribution, and end-of-life).

The Ellen Macarthur Foundation estimates that “if nothing changes, by 2050 the fashion industry will use up a quarter of the world’s carbon budget.”

“It’s really about bringing everyone together as an industry, and instead of having a few people talk about it, it’s having everyone talk about it and the leaders… actually taking responsibility, putting our money where our mouth is and making an amazing change together.”

So observes Stella McCartney while attending an 11 December gala dinner hosted in London by Bloomberg and Vanity Fair. The gala was held to highlight fashion, climate change, climate change mitigation, and the Fashion Industry Charter for Climate Change Action, signed in early December.

“There is no shortage of capital in the world that wants to go in this direction. The hearts and minds argument of the common man on the street, has been won. My feeling is that what the financial services business needs to do, is to be working with the real innovative companies of today,” said David Fass, Macquarie Group CEO for Europe the Middle East and Africa.

The founding signatories to the Fashion Industry Charter for Climate Change Action are: adidas, Aquitex, Arcteryx, Burberry Limited, Esprit, Guess, Gap Inc., H&M Group, Hakro Gmbh., Hugo Boss, Inditex, Kering Group, Lenzing AG, Levi Strauss & Co., Mammut Sports Group AG, Mantis World, Maersk, Otto Group, Pidigi S.P.A, PUMA SE, re:newcell, Schoeller Textiles AG, Peak Performance, PVH Corp., Salomon, Skunkfunk, SLN Textil, Stella McCartney, Sympatex Technologies, Target and Tropic Knits Group.

Fashion Industry Charter for Climate Change Action, excerpts:

· the Paris Agreement represents a global response to the scientific consensus that human activity is causing global average temperatures to rise at unprecedented rates

· goals agreed in the Paris Agreement translate to reaching climate neutrality [read: reduced to zero emissions of atmospheric CO2 and other greenhouse gases from sourcing, manufacturing, distribution, use, and end-of-life of materials and products; reduced to zero use of hydrocarbon-based sources of energy in operations, manufacturing, distribution, retail, transport, etc.] in the second half of the twenty-first century. The fashion industry, as a major global player, needs to take an active part in contributing to the realization of these goals

· all companies, within fashion, retail and textile global value chain, regardless of size and geography, have opportunities to take actions that will result in a measurable reduction in greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions

· establish a closer dialogue with consumers to increase awareness about the GHG emissions caused in the use and end-of-life phases of products, building towards changed consumer behaviors that reduce environmental impacts and extend the useful life of products

· current solutions and business models will not be sufficient to deliver on the current climate agenda. Fashion industry needs to embrace a deeper, more systemic change and scale low-carbon solutions

· the fashion industry stakeholders have a role to play in reducing climate emissions resulting from their operations, with an awareness that the majority of climate impact within the industry lies in manufacturing of products and materials

· all companies, within fashion, retail and the textile global value chain, regardless of size and geography, have opportunities to take actions that will result in a measurable reduction in greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions

· actions that reduce GHG emissions are consistent with, among other things, expanding economic opportunity, using resources more efficiently, driving economic competitiveness and innovation, and strengthening resilience

· responding to climate change requires action on both mitigation and adaptation

[Signatories agree to]

11. Establish a closer dialogue with consumers to increase awareness about the GHG emissions caused in the use and end-of-life phases of products, building towards changed consumer behaviors that reduce environmental impacts and extend the useful life of products;

12. Partner with the finance community and policymakers to catalyse scalable solutions for a low-carbon economy throughout the sector

“Stella McCartney and friends hit Bloomberg and Vanity Fair gala dinner,” Stephanie Takyi, The Standard, 13 December 2018

“Stella McCartney Slams Fast Fashion as a Threat to the Environment,” Lucca de Paoli, Bloomberg, 12 December 2018

“Inside the Bloomberg Vanity Fair Climate Exchange,” VF X Bloomberg, 11 December 2018

“Milestone Fashion Industry Charter for Climate Action launched,” UNFCCC, 10 December 2018

“About the Fashion Industry Charter for Climate Action,” UNFCCC

“Fashion Industry Charter for Climate Action,” UNFCC

“Measuring Fashion, Environmental Impact of the Global Apparel and Footwear Industries Study,” Quantis, 2018

“A New Textiles Economy: Redesigning Fashion’s Future,” November 2017, The Ellen MacArthur Foundation & Circular Fibers Initiative

“Report: A positive vision for a system that works, and summons the creative power of the fashion industry to build it,” Ellen MacArthur Foundation

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Dan Colen

Dan Colen’s “TBT” (chewing gum and gum wrappers on canvas, in artist’s frame, 2008) sold at the Phillips Auction New York Contemporary Art Day sale of 17 May 2013 for $305,000.

Born in Leonia, New Jersey in 1979 and a 2001 BFA graduate of the Rhode Island School of Design, Dan Colen has long questioned the “editorial decisions artists have to make when creating a scene from scratch on canvas.”

Stepping away from paint as a medium in 2006, Colen started using chewing gum. In 2008 he wrote, “When I first started, the canvases were very sparse … It slowly developed into a more elaborate and involved process. I started adding a lot more gum to each canvas; I would put pieces down, pick them up again, move ’em around, stretch them out, mush ’em together, and mix flavors to create new colors”.

Dan Colen creates his work in a variety of media – painting, sculpture, photography, performance, and installation – from a variety of materials including gum, dirt, grass, tar, feathers, and street trash from the street.

He examines cultural mythologies and archetypes, the boundaries between “high” and “low” art, and the artist’s measure of “control” over the behavior of a given material.

Dan Colen’s recent “Purgatory” (2017) is a work of strong imagination and probing. On view at New York’s Lévy Gorvy Gallery, that now collaborates with Gagosian and Massimo De Carlo to represent Mr. Colen, stylistically it is as if by another artist entirely. Oil on canvas in deep reds and black, the painting draws the viewer frighteningly in along a diagonal through a tunnel of dark clouds back towards a receding glow.

Mr. Colen’s works are in a number of public and private collections including New York’s Whitney Museum of American Art, Washington, D.C.’s Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Buffalo’s Albright-Knox Art Gallery,  LACMA, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Oslo’s Astrup Fearnley Museet, Stockholm’s Moderna Museet, the Dakis Joannou Collection in Athens, Miami’s de la Cruz Collection, and Puerto Rico’s Jiménez-Colón Collection.

 

See:

Dan Colen, “TBT,” 2008, Phillips Contemporary Art Day, New York, 17 May 2013, Lot 125

Dan Colen, Gagosian

Dan Colen, Lévy Gorvy

“Lévy Gorvy to Represent Dan Colen in Collaboration with Gagosian, Massimo De Carlo,” Sarah Douglas, ArtNews, 31 May 2017