I’m passionately concerned about the environmental catastrophe that is already upon us and only getting worse. We need to reverse climate change as soon as possible, and ending our dependence on fossil fuels is a key step. There seems to be a groundswell for the idea that the best way to do so is to divest from fossil fuels. So I have been reading up on divestment, and finding that no one, least of all Bill McKibben in his article “Divest from Fossil Fuels. Now,” has explained to me yet how this movement would further the goal of reducing fossil fuel use. I’m frustrated, because his organization, 350.org, and Naomi Klein, who’s also working on divestment, have been two bright lights in the environmental movement in recent years. I would love to be convinced that they are not wasting everyone’s time and a whole lot of activist energy on a project that divestment supporter Isaac Lederman, a Princeton student, says ” is attractive primarily because of the symbolic weight it carries.”
Granting that divestment helped end apartheid in South Africa (which is of course debatable, but I think the evidence is strong that it did), is this situation analogous? In one crucial way, it is not: it comes accompanied with no demands. And I fear that that dooms it to being merely symbolic.
In the South African divestment campaign, the message was simple. To corporations: cease operations in South Africa and we will re-invest in you. To the South African regime: end apartheid and we will support you and the return of corporations’ capital to your country. I strongly supported this movement, which was at its peak during my college years. I not only urged my university to divest its Shell holdings (on one occasion, by leading the crowd outside a trustees’ meeting in singing “Blowin’ in the Wind,” I cringe to recall), I stopped buying Shell.
But I can’t stop buying fossil fuels and the energy they produce–not yet. I use them to get to work, to do my laundry, to keep my food cool, to power this computer. (Unlike Mr. McKibben, I can’t afford to convert my home to solar power, though it’s on the list of improvements we’d like to make.) So if I support divestment, I’m asking people to stop funding Exxon’s oil exploration, while I’m pumping its gasoline. While I’m not advocating purity as a moral stance, this is too much cognitive dissonance for me. You scum, stop drilling! And give me that gas!
McKibben argues that these companies have so much political clout because of the value of their stock. That may be true in part. But no matter how low their stock drops, they’ll still drill, because we’re still buying their products, and they’ll still have political clout, because the economy can’t continue without them. Again: yet.
A change movement has to ask, what change are we hoping for and what’s the leverage that will bring it about? In South Africa, the answers were clear. With the Divest from Fossil Fuels campaign, I don’t get it. It seems to just be saying “Fossil fuels companies are horrible” (no argument there) and “If they extract and burn everything they’re trying to extract and burn, the warming of the planet will accelerate” (again, I agree). But as long as we are so dependent on extracting and burning them, nothing will change. A heroin junkie might be completely justified in demanding the arrest of all the heroin dealers, but if it were to happen, he’d be up a creek. He still needs his fix. I still need to get to work, 35 miles away.
The situation is too dire for symbolic gestures. We need to take real action. I love the idea of putting economic pressure on these companies, and the first question to ask–the question their directors and executives will surely ask–is “Pressure them to do what?,” a question that not even McKibben, the man who started the divestment movement, has answered. One colleague of mine has–thank you, Earl Koteen; he suggests that what we are asking fossil fuel companies to do is to switch their operations to sustainable sources and become (alternative) energy companies, as the savvier ones are beginning to do. That sounds promising. Now if only the movement, and not just one of its fans, would make a concrete demand like that, then it might make a difference. Even better, we could do the much more difficult work of funding alternative infrastructures that would allow us to break our fossil fuel addiction.
Sermons in Stones 
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April 17, 2013 at 4:47 pm
Roger "Chris" Schriner
I agree that divestment is a long-shot strategy. And sometimes strategies that are mainly symbolic are harmful, in making people think, “Look at the energy I’ve expended. It must be doing some good.” That can replace action that truly does make a difference.
Here’s an alternative: People and businesses respond to price signals. Fracking has created an oil and gas glut, driving down prices and thus encouraging consumption. Now various economic factors are pushing prices down even more.
Fracking has been accused of doing environmental damage, and it may be that we now actually have evidence of the kind that would influence gvt policies — a rash of earthquakes that seem to be due to the way fracking makes our terra less firma.
Effective anti-fracking activism would curtail supply, push prices up, and thus discourage consumption.
Chris Schriner
It’s also a polluter of groundwater–at least, as far as we know, since the companies carrying it out tend to argue that the chemicals they’re pouring into the ground are a proprietary formula and they can’t reveal them, even to a government agency. At least one state (WY, I think) has passed a law requiring disclosure before the fact, though. We are overdue in California, especially with gas companies salivating about the Monterey Shale. –AZM
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April 18, 2013 at 1:24 pm
Roger "Chris" Schriner
The groundwater concern, of course, has been widely discussed. But so far the evidence for water pollution due to fracking is not as dramatic as, say, an earthquake occurring where the ground has typically been stable. That’s why I think those quakes could be a game-changer.
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April 17, 2013 at 5:46 pm
Joel Monka
“…we are asking fossil fuel companies to do is to switch their operations to sustainable sources and become (alternative) energy companies,..” But that’s not a concrete demand, either. WHAT sustainable sources? WHAT alternatives? Those are easy words to say, but really hard to do. Alcohol is very expensive to manufacture, gets lousy mileage in your car, and at this point in development produces more CO2 in the growing and distilling than it saves. Hydrogen? Lots of production and storage problems there, too. Environmentalists are against more hydroelectric dams and nuclear power; animal rights activists are against wind, and solar is hideously expensive.
The Dept of Energy has been around for forty years now, and has yet to develop any viable alternatives, either. The only alternative fuel used in large numbers in real life was developed in WW II- the wood gas generator- and unfortunately, while it does free you from gasoline, it’s even worse on CO2. If the government can’t find an alternative in forty years of trying, how is divesting in Shell going to help?
Wow, Joel, that’s pretty depressing. So you think it’s impossible to develop alternatives to fossil fuels, yet they are making earth uninhabitable by humans. What do you propose?
Of course the demand would have to be more specific than that, but it’s not that hard to do. BP is already doing it. We could say, “You have to have a plan to switch over to 75% sustainable energy, defined as X, Y, or Z, by date Q, for us to call off the campaign. If you don’t stay on track, the campaign resumes.”
I’m not depressed about our prospects, because I think there’s lots of potential for sustainable energy, as is amply demonstrated in plenty of places. Here in California we have a level of alternative energy use that the rest of the country frequently says is impossible. (The animal rights activists haven’t rallied enough opposition to wind to stop it, perhaps because people know that other forms of energy generation are worse for animals.) It comes down to political will; the state voted in a requirement that a certain percentage of our energy would be from sustainable sources by a certain date–that would be a good model to use in strategic divestment, because of course it had to have very specific guidelines. We did the same with mileage standards, though we and the feds wasted millions of dollars over it, the feds suing us to keep us from raising our standards, the state fighting back, until an administration came in that didn’t want to fight about it any more. By the way, the Department of Energy had plenty of innovation (e.g., with solar) when the federal government had political will, too, and that’s how countries that use much more solar than we do (e.g., Germany) did it. But maybe my wife the energy analyst will chime in with more specifics than I know.
We could also use much less energy. The issue with energy efficiency is also political will, not technological limitations. McKibben is right on track with that idea, but I think the question of how to bring pressure to bear is more complex than he’s claiming. –AZM
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April 18, 2013 at 12:59 pm
Joel Monka
I didn’t say it was impossible, only that we’re not doing it, even though we’ve been paying to get it done for decades. There are a lot of things that could be done to reduce usage dramatically in the first place- but since they’re not the kinds of things one can make a lot of political mileage out of, there’s little interest in them.Things such as tax incentives to replace black or dark roofs with white ones- tests done back in the Carter years with two otherwise identical row houses showed that you can save up to 25% in home heating/cooling that way. Reforestation programs- really big ones, on a level with the 1930’s CCC, would take megatons of carbon out of the air AND reduce surface temperatures around heat-sink cities. Replacing black-top roads with white materials. Temporarily sodding over the parking lots of companies out of business. Lots more, too, if you look for it… but none of these things are sexy enough to get an Al Gore behind them.
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April 20, 2013 at 3:01 pm
Bill Hilton
If fossil fuel companies’ political clout were to decrease, I believe there would be stronger political appetite for increasing sustainable energy development, for enhanced energy conservation efforts (look what Tesoro and Valero tried with Prop 23), and lesser funding for “research” denying climate change. Further, I believe it is economically important to reduce the value of fossil fuel reserves IF those reserves can never be used because humans (and quite a few other species) will all be dead or we’ll have alternative energy we can live with. Finally, if there is an estimated level of atmospheric CO2 beyond which human cannot survive (as Bill McKibben and others postulate and support with data), I believe we have a moral duty to take all actions available to try to ensure that approximately 80% of the carbon in fossil fuels still below the ground (and the ocean) is NEVER burned. Lowering the economic worth of that carbon is one such action.
Thanks, Bill, for bringing the movement to UUCPA’s attention and for the ongoing education. –AZM
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