President Nelson Mandela and Bishop Desmond Tutu famously said that the divestment movement started by students in USA and Europe ostracized the racist apartheid government and helped end apartheid minority rule. Students convinced their colleges and universities to divest (sell or transfer) their stocks and holdings in South African companies as a show of solidarity with the Black South Africans’ movement for equal rights and justice in their own land. Today, students as well as organizations like 350.org are using divestment from fossil fuel companies (coal, gas, oil) as a tool to remove the aura of social respectability and power from fossil fuel companies and pressure them to stop producing and burning fossil fuels which directly cause climate change.
Bill McKibben, co-founder of 350.org, recently told Amy Goodman on “Democracy Now”:
“Well, I think that the real point of the divestment movement has been to kind of withdraw social license from these fossil fuel companies, and thereby reduce their political power. The reason we haven’t gotten anywhere on climate change for the 40 years that we’ve known about it is precisely because these guys wield so much political power. I mean, look, Exxon knew perfectly well that what Anna’s grandfather was saying was correct. They set to work climate-proofing all their own drilling rigs and other installations to account for the sea level rise they now knew was coming. But at the same time, they set up this vast framework, with others, of climate denial and deceit and disinformation. And they continue to, you know, hand out campaign checks to precisely the politicians that make sure nothing ever happens on these issues.
So, the point, at this point, is to use this divestment movement as a vehicle to get that across. And it is working. It’s not just, or even mainly, that there have been—it became the biggest divestment movement ever. I think at this point, you know, we’re closing in on $4 trillion worth of portfolios and endowments that have divested. The point is that it’s taken the basic message, the message that we have five times as much carbon in our reserves than any scientist thinks we could possibly burn, and it’s gotten that through. You know, three or four years ago, that was people like me writing in, you know, Rolling Stone. Now it’s the head of the World Bank, the head of the IMF, the governor of the Bank of England speaking to the world’s insurance industry at Lloyd’s of London. That message is getting through everywhere except Exxon and its ilk. Yesterday, Mr. Tillerson was boasting about how the company was going out and making new finds of oil in new places around the world. We have five times as much carbon in our reserves already as we can burn. The idea that we should celebrate the exploration for new hydrocarbons at this point goes past irony into some dark place that I don’t really have a name for.”
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