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With everyone from Harvard's endowment fund to the Rockefeller Foundation divesting, some are asking: Is fossil fuel "too dirty" for charity now?

"Oil was very good to John D. Rockefeller. It was the fuel he used to become the first person ever to amass a billion dollar personal fortune. By the time he died that fortune is estimated to have been worth upward of $663.4 billion if adjusted for dollars in the late 2000s. Because of that, Rockefeller is widely regarded to be the wealthiest American in history. And yet, as good as oil has been to fueling the fortune of John D. Rockefeller, his heirs are now abandoning the fuel by kicking it out of their charity's investment portfolio. This really is a bit of a surprising twist, as oil was the fuel that poured vast wealth into the Rockefeller Brothers Fund to bring it to its current value of $860 million. It's wealth that all started to flow in 1870 when John D. Rockefeller co-founded Standard Oil Company." -- Matt DiLallo, the Motley Fool


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