Stick to income growth investments

I get a lot of investment newsletters and ads disguised as newsletters
in my email. Today there was a general trend in them about "green"
investing. Al Gore may not have convinced all climatologists that
humanity is causing global warming (I'm not a climatologist, but I
know that the amount of radiation the sun emits has varied by up to
30% over the eons, which is why Earth has been both much colder and
much warmer than it is now, millions of years before people discovered
fire, so I know that any climate model that disregards the role of the
sun's radiation -- as the recent UN study did -- is scientifically
flawed and no doubt politically motivated.)

However, there's no doubt that -- whether the planet is warming up or
not or whether people caused it or not -- we do need to find more
efficient ways to generate energy and slow down and ultimately clean
up pollution. Hey, I rode my bicycle to school on the very first
Earth Day! And I was an anti-nuke activist in 1980.

So it's fine with me to learn that AOL head Steve Case and Lee Iocca
have teamed up to invest in a Flexcar. And that major company are
financing research into alternative sources of energy such as wind and
solar power. Not being an engineer up on these things, I don't know
how to judge whether the optimists or pessimists are correct in
evaluating their potential.

And one newsletter talked a lot about nanotechnology is helping, though
without going into detail. I'm certainly no expert on nanotechnology
but I always figured that would be most useful for cleaning up
pollution. Release a cloud of anti-PCB micro-machines and in a few weeks or months all PCBs could be removed from the environment.

So there's no doubt that "green" is a growth industry, and it could
well be that nanotechnology is going to fuel the next stock market
boom. But I have to maintain that ordinary investors should stick
with income growth stocks that pay dividends.

If you have the deep pockets of Steve Case or Lee Iococca and you want to help the planet, fine -- I applaud you. Let's face it -- if the FlexCar fails, Steve Case and Lee Iococca may well lose millions of dollars but they'll still have many more millions. It won't affect their lifestyles. I think it's wonderful they are risking any amount of their money. But for us ordinary investors, stick with investments that pay you money.



income growth
income growth