QuestionerOn the other side of that argument, because there were lots of emails that came in both, on both sides of these ESG questions. This one comes from Christina Gallagos, who's been a shareholder since 2018, and she says, on items two and three of the proxy materials, the board recommended voting against on the shareholder proposal regarding the reporting of climate-related risks and opportunities, as well as on the shareholder proposal regarding diversity and inclusion reporting. Berkshire is such a force for good when it comes to financial literacy and empowerment through wealth creation. Why not be a force for good and an example when it comes to these very two important, two very important issues. Please share with us more about the against recommendation.
WarrenI've had, and I get the letters that are written to me, I don't think I've had, I don't think I've had three letters in the last year from shareholders. Now I have them, and our vote on this, as you'll see later, is that. that overwhelmingly, the people that bought Berkshire with their own money voted against those properties. Most of the votes for it were by, came from people who would never put a dime of their own money into Berkshire. And so they, and I don't think they read our annual reports, and I don't think they read the reports, and I don't think they read the reports of Berkshire Hathaway Energy, and I don't think they know, you know, if I talk about what we're doing in high voltage transmission, we're doing more than anybody. company of the country. The president talked about what the government's going to do and how important it is. And, you know, we have a record in that overall is incredibly good, but we have a group of organizations just generally, and they're nice people, but they want us to answer a bunch of questionnaires their way, so they want us to go to Derry Queen and Borsheims and all those people have them fill out reports. that show a bunch of figures when the reports to count are the reports that Greg gets on Berksor Out of the Way energy and the railroad and you talk about three of our companies and you've covered 95 percent of it and it's asinine frankly in my view now we do some other asinine things because we're required to do them so we'll we'll do whatever's required but to have the people at you know business wire you know, Dairy Queen, all these places. I felt like out reports to make it some common report that comes in.
[2:36]
WarrenWe don't do that stuff at Berkshire. I don't think we think we know the answer to all these questions about global warming and so forth. And the people who ask the questions think they know the answers. We're just more modest.
WarrenWell, but even if we knew the answer, I mean, in terms of what we, the reports, we would.
QuestionerYeah.
WarrenWe would not collect a whole lot of things that don't mean, anything to us and to satisfy people who actually don't own any stock themselves. And in many cases, I can tell I haven't read our report even. The, you know, we, as I pointed out in the annual report, and I never, nobody would have guessed that people think we're a bunch of guys who own stocks and all that sort of thing. It is interesting that we have published this information. We spent far more than any utility than that in terms of renewables and transmission in the United States. And we started with nothing. You know, the people that bought the stock with their own money, the individuals, they seem to understand it. And they read the reports and we get calls and they say, well, we want to come out and talk to you about it. Well, we're not talking to them and ignoring the million people that have been with us over time and bought it with their own money. We will not give special treatment to either to analysts or to the, to the, to, to, to, to, to, you know, to the institutions over the individuals that basically trust us with their savings for their lifetime.