https://neweconomics.opendemocracy.net/sustainable-finance-the-divestment-approach/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=sustainable-finance-the-divestment-approach Tue, 11 Sep 2018 13:30:02 +0000 hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=5.3.8 https://neweconomics.opendemocracy.net/sustainable-finance-the-divestment-approach/#comment-297 Sun, 07 May 2017 22:28:00 +0000 https://www.opendemocracy.net/neweconomics/?p=971#comment-297 It’s amazing: this essay expounds at such length with opinions which have been rebutted so many times. It’s irrelevant whether new purchasers of fossil-fuel stocks do not have the scruples of divesters, because – as those with long experience of attempts at “engagement” with these companies via shareholder resolutions and otherwise (including spokespersons for the Rockefeller Brothers Fund) have attested – such engagement efforts are futile as regards changing fundamental business practices. Fossil-fuel companies’ business-plan “scenarios” explicitly predict that as a consequence of their products’ usage, average global temperatures will rise to catastrophic levels, yet they continue to lobby and fund political campaigns as well as think tanks in pursuit of those goals. See the Union of Concerned Scientists’ criteria for what would be responsible business practices for such companies. Since that willful disregard for consequences persists, both the companies and investors who do not take emphatic action are culpable for outcomes. We have no alternative at this time but to use fossil fuels in our lives, although we can substantial reduce our “footprints.” Systemic change must happen, which will require legislation, which will require citizen education, which is what the divestment movement is accomplishing. There is no initiative which has been whatsoever as effective in mobilizing large numbers of people to address climate change, for good reasons which the author would do well to re-evaluate.

]]>