On October 18th the Ford Foundation, with an endowment worth over $16 billion, announced it would divest from fossil-fuel companies. Other foundations, private investors, universities, and governments also pulled their assets in records numbers last month.
John R. Platt writes in The Revelator that Bill McKibben and 350.org “first advocated for fossil-fuel divestment in 2012 as a way to ‘revoke the social license of the fossil fuel industry.’”
Divestment has now “turned into what’s probably the biggest anti-corporate campaign in history,” according to Bill McKibben. “It’s not only badly tarnished the social license of these companies but dented their access to capital so badly that Peabody Coal called it one cause of their bankruptcy and Shell Oil said it was having a ‘material adverse effect’ on their business. Since their business is having a material adverse effect on the prospects for life on earth, turnabout is fair play.”
John R. Platt confirms this pressure has started to influence business leaders’ decisions. In October, “five major investment groups with a collective $60 trillion in assets called for the utilities in which they have holdings to decarbonize by the year 2035.”
The essential shift to a clean energy economy is underway — and accelerating.
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Photo credit: WClarke Wikimedia Commons Exxon Mobil Refinery - Baton Rouge, Louisiana