The first grassroots divestiture initiative of my adult life was directed toward ending Apartheid. Anyone who was alive and aware in the seventies and eighties remembers how the South African economy was impacted by that initiative.
It took a long time to get the U.S. government on board, but the movement grew steadily from the sixties forward, as more and more negative attention was turned on the practice of Apartheid, until overwhelming popular support for divestiture forced Congress to officially embrace the policy in 1986. In this way, Americans were able to join others across the world in voting with their collective pocketbook to end an abhorrent and unjust system.
In revisiting the fight to end Apartheid as Nelson Mandela is remembered, it is useful to also note how effective an instrument of change divestiture proved to be.
350.org is asking us to use that same strategy to undermine the enormous power of dirty fuel companies to prolong their dying (and deadly) industry. They ask us to please sign the petition urging our legislature to divest Vermont’s pension fund from fossil fuel investments.
The argument is not just about what is the right thing to do for the planet; it is about what is the economically well advised thing to do for the value of those pension funds.
Vermont State Treasurer Beth Pearce has recognized the risk inherent to investment in fossil fuels, and joined a group of other large fund managers to pose questions to the industry about the
Despite all the big noise about how the U.S. is ramping-up fuel production in order to become “energy independent,” the fossil fuel industry knows full-well that the practical end is near.
Yes, there’s plenty of fossil filth still sequestered in the earth; but it is becoming apparent to all but the most determinedly blind, that the planet is changing even more rapidly than climate scientists predicted it would; and the negative consequences are already unacceptable.
Those impacts translate not only into human misery, but also into dollars and cents; and the balance sheet is looking none too good for long-term exploitation of coal, oil and gas.
Is that really a smart place to invest state workers’ retirement nest egg?
You can bet the smart money knows what’s coming, but they’ll play it large for as long as they can, so as to ring out as much profit as possible before the curtain falls.
The public has not responded with particular urgency to the alarming message we hear every day, that climate change is advancing more and more rapidly; that we are already past the tipping point, and that our future seems certain to be racked with appalling climate events and disappearing shorelines.
Maybe a shift in message like this will help the metaphorical penny drop.
Congress won’t act to establish meaningful legislation aimed at replacing fossil fuel in the nations energy arsenal; Obama hasn’t acted in any meaningful way.
But we can sign the petition. We can insist that state pension funds be invested in ways that do not leave those assets vulnerable to the kind of fiscal calamity that is lurking just beyond the horizon, linked arm-in-arm with the global climate calamity that nearly all scientists agree is heading our way.
Fossil fuel use can be defeated before it’s too late, just as Apartheid was. As much as was riding on that victory, the stakes here are exponentially greater and more urgent.
We find something to disagree upon. IF we want them to change we must be players IN the game. Owing a share of the game is the only way to change the tactics of the companies. BUT, that is only the divestment from one part. I sense you want us to move from oil altogether? Give up your drugs and medical devices. Plastic is a pain in the butt but pretty necessary these days. Take a trip into the local ER or operating room and behold the petrochemical industry. Most chemical compounds have some tie to holes in the ground.
Sooner or later we will run out-or rather THEY will run out as I suspect we will be long gone. The thing that will drive the incremental change will be that you can’t fly a F-16 or Huey on old Chinese food grease so the military will force the direction of the now scarce and strategic commodity away from we civilians who will hopefully be off onto batteries and compressed Natural gas.
My bet, Exxon Mobil will be long before selling whatever it takes to get us to where we are going.
I think a long range plan for NOT draining the earth of a valuable commodity and pushing it out our exhaust pipes is a good thing, and government will have a part in that. But as I crawl up on the newly replaced electric streetcar, I still think divestment for the sake of political pressure is not in line with the need to maximize the return on the investment of public funds in the retirement kettle. Whatever we lose in investment, we make up for out of our pockets… We call that Taxes…. Don’t think it will happen, nor should it.
As a future beneficiary of state pension funds, I strongly support divestment. Fossil fuel companies won’t be able to burn all the carbon already discovered, never-mind future discoveries. As such, the share prices of these companies are inflated and therefore a risky investment. Moreover, I want to feel good about how the income I retire is derived. I work hard to live a low carbon life and the fact that 10% of my future pension is invested in big oil bothers me.
Also, Treasurer Pearce’s opinion that you need to be a shareholder to cajole change does not work in a divestment paradigm. It is akin to going to a party and telling everyone at the party that they should not be enjoying themselves. Shareholder activism work when you want a company to change a business practice for the better (like encouraging more recycling). Shareholder activism is not going to work when you own shares of an oil company and you are telling them to get out of the oil business. This just isn’t a reasonable change that can be begotten by shareholder activism. The only thing that big oil is going to respond to is downward pressure on their share-prices. Divesting state pension dollars from the top 200 fossil fuel companies is a great start in that direction.
… by 350.org’s own admission. So why would we give up our voice on an issue that is so important? That’s all divestment accomplishes. It puts shares to be sold into the hands of those who care less about these issues than we do, almost by definition. What sense does that make? You may not like the odds that shareholders advocating for change face. But they’re greater than the odds of being taken seriously when you don’t own the shares – which is exactly zero.