Meet Tavi, a fashionable teenager from Chicago and founder of Clothing with a Cause.

She shares: “clothing is one of my main passions and I’ve decided to combine it with my concern for the genocide in Darfur for my Bat Mitzvah Tzedakah service project.”

Over the summer for her charity project Tavi posted stylish fashion textiles sold with all profits going towards STAND. STAND is an amazing American student organization helping to end the current genocide in Darfur.

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But to make this good cause even better, Compartes Chocolatier has created an African Collection of chocolates to pair with each Relief Beads bracelet. The collection is made up of authentic African ingredients like cardamom, coconut, Grains of Paradise, caramelized plantains and so much more. You can buy a 5 piece set for $20 or 10 piece set for $30. I know this is more than what we usually pay for chocolate treats, but each purchase can give one child food for a week or life-giving heat on cold nights. Get your special Compartes gift packages online or at their boutique in Los Angeles!

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They are selling handcrafted, original bracelets made from sand in Ghana, Africa to further support the humanitarian efforts of Relief International, an independent, non-profit organization providing necessary medical care, counseling and educational courses to thousands of women and children in Darfur. Relief International’s programs are essential to the recovery of this war-torn country.

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Apart from parading their own theoretic short and long term goals and how best to approach this growing problem while clouding their own best national interests, making concessions for climate change may prove harder than committing to curb global carbon pollution.

As the main players at the Hokkaido summit, were the G8 Club, and China, Brazil and India, to pose and think about climate change issues as possible recipe for wars, the plight of the millions of victims of the conflict in Darfur, Sudan would connect with their jostling for the best breathing space.

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There has been talk recently of boycotting the 2008 Beijing Olympics for any number of valid reasons. Whether it is for the freedom of Tibet, the atrocities in Darfur, or China’s environmental policies.

However, what would be achieved by boycotting the Olympics? Is China going to step back and say, “Whoa… the United States is right. We are all messed up and need to change.” Probably not.

And who are we to tell another country that they aren’t perfect? If the Olympics were here, who would be boycotting our games?

As a child I was led to believe that the Olympics were a coming together of different cultures and nations for the sake of sport and international cooperation. And in fact that WAS part of the basis for reinventing the Olympics in the first place. As the father of modern Olympics, Baron Pierre de Coubertin once said,

“May joy and good fellowship reign, and in this manner, may the Olympic torch pursue its way through ages, increasing friendly understanding among nations, for the good of a humanity always more enthusiastic, more courageous and more pure.”

Of course, I grew up and found that most of my dreams and fantasies taught to me by society were pure poppycock. But do all of our childhood misconceptions about the world have to be disproved? I mean, Santa Claus is a given, but what about the concept of peace on earth and goodwill towards man?

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In Gansu, China, a region that receives little rainfall and has no trees, a very old technology has provided a solution: the solar oven. The concept of using a curved mirror to focus sunlight, and the heat it provides, has been around since the ancient Greeks; relief and development agency Operation Blessing International has purchased and installed over 200 of these ovens (made from concrete and mirrors) in Gansu. The program has been so popular that the organization has just released funding for 200 more in the region. According to Operation Blessing president Bill Horan,

"In Gansu, like in many other poverty-stricken regions around the world, firewood is as precious as water. There are virtually no trees here, and so little rain, that the only bath most people take in their whole life is on their wedding day. These solar ovens are based on ancient technology and they are eco-friendly - a totally renewable energy source."

OBI is considering taking the program to another devastated region of the world: the Darfur region of the Sudan, where the organization operates several refugee and relief camps in partnership with a German charity.

We Westerners tend to associate "technology" with the latest devices: computers, cell phones, renewable energy installations, etc. This simple, time-tested technology, though, looks like just the thing for impoverished people around the world. And, even with the high carbon emissions associated with concrete production, this looks like a pretty climate-friendly alternative, too…

Operation Blessing International
Wikipedia: Solar Cooker
Video: Operation Blessing in Gansu, China (Windows Media format)

In the past week alone, we've seen the U.N. point its finger squarely at the developed nations responsible for most of the carbon dioxide in the air, and have heard Asian leaders lash out against their region's growing reputation as pollution poster child.

Not to excuse countries like China, because it is a fast-rising contributor to global pollution and greenhouse gases, but why is that? Because we consumers in the West have an insatiable appetite for the cheap goods it pumps out. If we weren't buying all that stuff, China wouldn't be making it.

The Sudan situation and global warming's role in worsening it is stickier, so I'll leave that for now. But how's this for a solution to the Chinese goods/pollution problem: a carbon import tax imposed by the nations buying what polluted, developing countries make? The more the exporters pollute, the steeper the tax. That way, we provide developing nations with an incentive to cut emissions, and we gain a revenue stream that can be directed toward carbon mitigation or alternative energy projects.

Evidence of this backlash surfaced last week. Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott issued a statement that requiring divestment on any grounds would be contrary to the Texas constitution. As his reasoning goes, pension funds are to be run “for the sole benefit of pensioners”, so any bar set on moral grounds amounts to a diversion of funds.

Pending legislation is currently being debated in the Texas Legislature as well as at several county and municipal levels. Thankfully, the Attorney General neither writes laws, nor issues legal rulings. In my opinion, the move was meant to signal to lawmakers that he will be ready and willing to take up the cause against the legislation if, and when, it becomes law. He disputes the idea that the Legislature has the right to direct the pension trustees. Legislators respectfully disagree.

As a resident of Austin, I have observed the Attorney General, a Republican, and generally thought highly of his law enforcement and his avoidance of partisan hackery. Most Texans admire him for overcoming his disabilities (the AG is wheelchair-bound). On this issue, however, he is deeply mistaken. Setting guidelines about the fitness of a company for investment is what trustees and their managers do. That is what it is all about. Many pension funds worldwide, for example, require that companies have a listing on a major exchange. Pink sheet companies are forbidden. Others have guidelines that only “investment grade” bonds can be owned. Mostly, I find it highly relevant to pensioners to assume that companies who aid and abet genocide might not have the best interest of pensioners on their minds. Companies that make the right moral choices generally turn out to be the best stewards of investment money. They are not mutually exclusive propositions.

But, wait. After reading the statement and dismissing it as the ramblings of an ignorant bureaucrat, I actually reconsidered my opinion. Nationwide, divestment legislation is a mish-mash, differing widely in scope, flexibility, and targets. Most enacted or pending legislation is targeting the regimes in Sudan, Iran, and North Korea. However, other smaller divestment movements exist around animal rights, sweatshop labor, non-union labor, alchohol, gaming, abortion (on both sides), and others. Taken separately, I can begin to understand the fear facing pension managers. Pensioners do not need trustees that have to look over the shoulders of their managers on every transaction, and managers should not need to check with their attorney every time they want to make a trade.

All divestment movements would be well-served by simplifying and unifying. The legislation should be about forcing pension trustees to hear the voice of the people. Making judgements on moral grounds should not only be accepted, but expected. We should abandon the efforts to push through every single divestment agenda. Instead , we should focus on protecting the trustees’ authority to set moral guidelines and defeating ideas such as those coming from the AG’s office.

The California Public Employee Retirement System (Calpers) has operated with a social agenda for a few decades, and remains a leader in both performance and respect nationwide. The blueprint is there.

Mark Brandon is the owner of First Sustainable, a registered investment advisory catering to socially responsible investors.

If successful, pension funds representing teachers, police, firefighters, and other government employees would have to dump billions of dollars in equity in the offending companies. Presumably, the tidal wave of supply in unwanted stock will force the companies to divest from Sudan, or at best, force the companies to in turn force the regime to change its ways.

On the face of it, the decision to divest seems to be a clear cut moral choice, but in practice, conflicts of interest coupled with questions about whether divestment works not only stalls the pending legislation, but is also overturning existing legislation.

On the conflict question, opposing forces claim that a law forcing divestment conflicts with existing laws requiring fund managers to act in the best interest of the shareholders. If the companies in question generate better than average returns, the thinking goes, then fund managers have neglected their fiduciary duty to seek out the best returns. The fund managers, who are opposed to the law, point out that the companies, most of whom are from the oil and oil services sector, have not only outperformed the rest of their portfolio, but also the benchmark indexes. This much is true. Socially responsible investors must always concede better returns when heavy smokestack industries are in favor.

The last few years have seen superior returns from oil companies. However, when those companies are out of favor, SRI portfolios perform better. SRI portfolios are more heavily weighted toward technology and healthcare stocks, so for the seven years prior to the recent run-up in oil prices, SRI-screened portfolios performed better.

Divestment proponents lost a key battle on the conflict front. On February 23, a federal judge overturned Illinois' law, which was generally regarded as the most progressive, but also the most restrictive. The judge said such a law violates the federal government's authority to set foreign policy. Less restrictive laws have passed judicial muster, though.

Whether divestment works, or not, is also in question. Proponents point to the institutional investor pressure placed on the Apartheid-era regime in South Africa as a key reason for that regime's fall. Opponents claim that the reasons behind Apartheid's fall are more complex, and also say that excess supply caused by dumping will just be scooped up at bargain prices by investors with less scruples.

I can neither give concrete evidence that divestment does or does not work. However, if you own shares in the offending companies, whether through your pension or directly, then you personally are profiting from genocide. So, to me, it does not matter if it works. I would want no part of it. Companies such as Oil and Natural Gas Co. of India, China Natural Petroleum Corp., and Schlumberger (NYSE:SLB) should pay the price of propping up murderers.

Mark Brandon is the owner of First Sustainable, a socially responsible investment advisory. His weekly column on SRI appears in Green Options on Mondays.