The environmental activist and writer Bill McKibben estimates that the movement to pressure institutions to stop investing in and profiting from carbon-emitting industries has resulted in institutions pledging to pull $15 trillion in investments from polluting companies.
That’s an incredible achievement in just one decade. However, climate divestment’s increasing visibility has also cultivated an audience of detractors. Some opponents claim that divestment cannot meaningfully change the demand for fossil fuels — and in fact, lowering share prices can make those companies attractive to less ethical investors. Going a step further, such critics claim that divestment’s economic harm to companies has always been minimal — even in apartheid-era South Africa, where divestment as a tactic was born.
But measuring divestment’s success solely on its financial impacts is a mistake. Divestment’s true power is the ability to change minds and mobilize action, with effects that reach far beyond targeted investors and companies.
