Episode 63: Sustainable Investing: A Philosophical and Environmental Perspective on Your Money, with Tim Nash

We have a really special episode in store today as we welcome Tim Nash, the Sustainable Economist! Tim shares a vast amount of knowledge and ideas with us on how investors wishing to put their money where their heart is can go about investing more ethically and sustainably. We hear about Tim’s journey into investing and economics and how he wound up doing the work he currently does, helping investors clarify where their money is going and how to put it portfolios that are more aligned with their beliefs. He unpacks how these ideas and actions can have an impact and what it would take for some kind of systemic shift towards more sustainable industry and companies. We discuss the use of other modes of change as well as the personal practice of investors versus the placement of their money. Tim does such a great job of explaining how he goes about assessing different companies and portfolios and filtering which meet the criteria that he would suggest to his audience. The last part of the episode contains a really impressive argument from Tim around how investing this way can also be beneficial for strictly economic reasons and that it would suit all people to consider the

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Key Points From This Episode:

• Tim’s education and how he became The Sustainable Economist. [0:01:49.6]
• The actual service that Time provides for his clients and audience. [0:04:18.1]
• How does this type of sustainable investing have an impact? [0:05:41.9]
• Considering the efficacy of other means to bring about change. [0:11:06.4]
• Squaring personal practices and investing principles of an individual. [0:14:37.3]
• The criteria that Tim uses to assess items in a portfolio. [0:21:17.1]
• Tim unpacks his experiences of anarchist portfolios! [0:28:54.8]
• Allowing ethical investors to feel good about their portfolios. [0:31:50.6]
• The usefulness of so-called ESG screening for finding robust companies. [0:33:41.3]
• The twofold imperative to ethical and sustainable investing. [0:38:11.2]
• The product landscape for investors building sustainable portfolios. [0:40:57.8]
• How Tim helps people through his fee for service planning. [0:45:48.2]
• Tim’s own definition of success! [0:47:44.6]
• And much more!

Tweetables:

“What we’re seeing is that that’s pushing a lot of new projects out of probability because their cost of capital is now much higher than what it would have been otherwise.” — @timenash [0:09:30]

“I think we’ve been sold a bit of a myth that the way for us to deal with global climate change is to stop driving or flying or buy an electric car.” — @timenash [0:15:02]

“It’s important to understand that Canadian investors have a huge carbon impact through their portfolio.” — @timenash [0:17:03]

Links From Today’s Episode:

Rational Reminder Website — https://rationalreminder.ca/
Tim Nash on Twitter — https://twitter.com/timenash

Good Investing — https://www.goodinvesting.com

Dalhousie — https://www.dal.ca/

Unilever — https://www.unilever.com

Paul Polman — https://www.unilever.com/news/press-releases/2018/unilever-ceo-announcement.html

Mark Carney — https://www.bankofcanada.ca/profile/mark-carney/

Wealthsimple — https://www.wealthsimple.com

Northwest Ethical Investments — https://www.neiinvestments.com

ExxonMobil — https://corporate.exxonmobil.com/

Michael Jantzi — https://ca.linkedin.com/in/michael-jantzi-5729312

Sustainalytics — https://www.sustainalytics.com

Enbridge — https://www.enbridge.com/

SNC Lavalin — https://www.snclavalin.com/en

Warren Buffett — https://www.forbes.com/profile/warren-buffett/#45dece364639

Horizons — https://horizons.gc.ca/en/about-us/