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Why the Fossil Fuel Divestment Movement May Ultimately Win
Why the Fossil Fuel Divestment Movement May Ultimately Win
The fossil fuel divestment campaign has so far persuaded only a handful of universities and investment funds to change their policies. But if the movement can help shift public opinion about climate change, its organizers say, it will have achieved its primary goal.
Nestled in Vermont’s bucolic Champlain valley, Middlebury College is a seedbed of environmental activism. Middlebury students started 350.org, the environmental organization that is fighting climate change and coordinating the global campaign for fossil-fuel divestment. Bill McKibben, the writer and environmentalist who is spearheading the campaign, has taught there since 2001. Yet Middlebury has declined to sell the oil, gas, and coal company holdings in its $1 billion endowment.
McKibben’s alma mater, Harvard University — which has a $36 billion endowment, the largest of any university — also has decided not to divest its holdings in fossil fuel companies. Indeed, virtually all of the United States’ wealthiest universities, foundations, and public pension funds have resisted pressures to sell their stakes in fossil fuel companies. And while a handful of big institutional investors — Norway’s sovereign wealth fund, Stanford University, and AXA, a French insurance company — have pledged to sell some of their coal investments, coal companies account for less than 1 percent of the value of publicly traded stocks and an even smaller sliver of endowments.
Put simply, the divestment movement is not even a blip on the world’s capital markets.
Yet McKibben says the campaign is succeeding “beyond our wildest possible dreams.” By email, he tells Yale Environment 360:
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Energy round-up: tectonic shifts
Energy round-up: tectonic shifts
Photo credit: 
gnuckx
Three things you shouldn’t miss this week
- Chart: Is the global economy becoming less energy intensive?
Source: BP Statistical Review of World Energy 2015
- Article: Fossil fuel divestment is rational, says former Shell chairman – Mark Moody-Stuart is also worried about the lack of industry progress in addressing climate change.
- Article: BP sees ‘tectonic shift’ in world energy production – Energy consumption slows dramatically as China cutback and Opec battle US shale drillers.
This week the latest edition of the BP Statistical Review of World Energynoted two important trends.
- Renewables are still the fastest growing source of global energy
In 2014 global energy consumption growth fell to its lowest level since 1998: even better is that renewables made up 30% of that growth. While this is positive, the scale of the challenge can’t be underestimated: BP’s report shows that renewables still contribute just 3% of global primary energy.
Indeed, a new report from the IEA this week called for more policy support for the sector because the current rate of progress is not fast enough to meet the 2°C climate target. For the same reason, a group of scientists and economists led by Sir David King, former chief scientific advisor to the UK government, called for an Apollo-style mission to make renewable power cheaper than coal within a decade.
- Global greenhouse gas emissions growth has slowed to 0.5%
However, the emissions figures aren’t as positive as the IEA’s preliminary estimates which showed 2014 emissions stalling at 2013 levels. While it’s encouraging to see emissions growth starting to slow, we mustn’t forget that what we really need is a rapid decrease overall.
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