“Acknowledging the need for urgent and broad-based political action, student divestment activists value community organising for collective action over individualised approaches to climate change, including policies focussed on personal carbon emissions reduction and sustainability measures.” (Grady-Benson et al. 2016)
“The divestment campaign is driven by a single and simple climate change narrative in which global bads are linked to global temperature.” (Hulme 2015)
“The outcome of the stigmatisation process, which the fossil fuel divestment campaign has now triggered, poses the most far-reaching threat to fossil fuel companies and the vast energy value chain. Any direct impacts pale in comparison.” (Ansar et al. 2013)
“For all of the noise divestment campaigns create, they do little to affect the supply-and-demand economics that would undercut the business of mining, drilling for and refining fossil fuels…But that does not mean divestment campaigns have no consequences. What they do best is good old-fashioned public shaming” (Gelles 2015)
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For divestment campaigns, students and activists feel that there is a “moral imperative” for their schools’ endowments to reflect their values (Grady-Benson and Sarathy 2016) and that the action of divesting stigmatizes fossil fuel companies, perhaps enough to actually affect their economic viability (direct outcomes). For colleges seeking to divest, a key goal is to exhibit the want for fossil fuel companies and governments to “undergo ‘transformative change’ that can cause a drastic reduction in carbon emissions” (Ansar et al. 2013). However, the less direct outcomes are just as important to many campaigners. Thomas P. Oles in the Chronicle of Higher Education summarizes nicely that “when people act on ideas, even uncertain ideas, and take on big projects with long odds, they can make those ideas true.”
Many others feel that the symbolic action is inconsequential, a nuisance, and diverting attention and energies away from other more practical solutions. Mike Hulme paints the movement as “‘feel-good’ campaigning,” and as a whole is a campaign rooted in oversimplifications that will not result in real, effective policy change. Investors and schools are more focused on financial concerns in their decisions to reject divestment proposals. They tend to argue that “colleges must act in accordance with fiduciary responsibility… to ensure the stability of the college over the long term,” that it’s silly to divest from companies when the bulk of energy used on campuses comes from them anyway, and that divesting won’t actually do anything to hurt fossil fuel companies (Grady-Benson and Sarathy 2016). This being said, direct outcomes that campaigners may be hoping for, such as economic destabilizing of fossil fuel companies, are seriously minimal, however indirect and long term effects of ongoing stigmatizing (collective shaming) could be substantial (Ansar et al. 2013).
Works cited:
Ansar, Atif, Ben Caldecott, and James Tilbury. “Stranded Assets and the Fossil Fuel Divestment Campaign: What Does Divestment Mean for the Valuation of Fossil Fuel Assets.” Oxford, U.K.: Smith School of Enterprise and the Environment, October 2013. http://www.fossilfuelsreview.ed.ac.uk/resources/Evidence%20-%20Investment,%20Financial,%20Behavioural/Smith%20School%20-%20Stranded%20Assets.pdf.
Grady-Benson, Jessica, and Brinda Sarathy. “Fossil Fuel Divestment in US Higher Education: Student-Led Organising for Climate Justice.” Local Environment 21, no. 6 (June 2016): 661–81. doi:10.1080/13549839.2015.1009825.
Oles, Thomas P. “Institutions’ Misplaced Fear of Fossil-Fuel Divestment,” April 2, 2015. http://www.chronicle.com/blogs/conversation/2015/04/02/institutions-misplaced-fear-of-fossil-fuel-divestment/.
Hulme, Mike. “Why Fossil Fuel Divestment Is a Misguided Tactic.” The Guardian, April 17, 2015, sec. Environment. https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2015/apr/17/why-fossil-fuel-divestment-is-a-misguided-tactic.
Gelles, David. “Fossil Fuel Divestment Movement Harnesses the Power of Shame.” The New York Times, June 13, 2015. https://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/14/business/energy-environment/fossil-fuel-divestment-movement-harnesses-the-power-of-shame.html.