Researchers from the Centre for Biomedical Technology at Universidad Politécnica de Madrid and their colleagues at the ETSI
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One of the most focused endeavors of the broader fight against climate change is the movement to demand divestment from fossil fuel companies. Specifically focused on institutional investors, divestment activists have been pressuring pension funds, university endowments, and others with significant holdings in the oil and gas sector to sell those shares (or bonds). This is a multi-pronged effort to raise awareness about how these industries fuel climate change, to divert that capital to low- and zero-carbon resources, and to deter future investment in oil and gas exploration.
As part of that campaign, February 13 and 14 have been designated Global Divestment Day(s), with hundreds of events organized by activist groups. The Norwegian sovereign wealth fund — the largest in the world, built from the country's oil and gas wealth — has announced it would sell holdings in coal and mining companies that, in its estimation, represent an unacceptably high degree of climate-related investment risk. The fossil fuel companies under target are pushing back, with ad campaigns focused on the important role their products play in the global economy.
With these events as a backdrop, a new report from the American Security Project (ASP), a Washington, D.C.-based think tank, casts a critical eye on the divestment movement. The report offers a sensible reminder of what fossil fuel divestment can and cannot do.
While divestment aims at supply-side solutions (trying to starve fossil fuel companies of the capital to fund new exploration and exploitation of reserves), it is beyond the scope of the divestment movement to address the demand side of the equation. Unlike the divestment in Big Tobacco (from which the current movement draws inspiration), coal, oil, and natural gas are not discretionary goods; they are critical to the global economy. Oil companies are not lying when they say people will still need to buy oil over the next 15 to 20 years. Replacements may be available on the horizon (paging Elon Musk), but supplying them at scale remains a challenge.
The financial impact of divestment also tends to be overstated. The ASP report and similar efforts, such as the Stranded Assets Programme at Oxford University, have demonstrated that complete divestment of university endowments from these holdings would, in the long run, have a negligible financial impact on the bottom lines of fossil fuel companies. Money would still flow into company coffers.
What's more, the universities and other organizations that divest could reasonably be accused of violating their fiduciary duty by forgoing money-making investments. That calculation will likely change as renewable-energy investments grow, especially with the proliferation of green bonds, but that market is still far from making steady gains year over year.
While the ASP report puts fossil fuel divestment in its proper place, it leaves open the question of whether the movement can be taken in a direction that is more useful to goals that both activists and analysts share.
Take the example of the Norwegian divestment. Its decision was not to divest from all fossil fuels. Instead, it is taking a measured approach that tries to identify the riskiest assets — and sell only those. Call it "divestment lite" — taking the well-intentioned motives behind divestment and deploying it in a much more targeted and tailored way. It will keep some assets that may be valuable in the intermediate term, but still send a signal to the market and public at-large that changes need to be made.
The ASP report rightfully points out one of the benefits of holding stocks in the first place: shareholder activism. To better leverage their activist network, fossil fuel divesters should follow the Norwegian model, focusing on the low-hanging fruit of coal, tar sands, and oil companies that are inadequately preparing their own businesses for future climate risk. Conversely, they should test the sincerity of companies such as Shell, and explore how to best work with them when their CEO says the oil sector needs to be more constructive in the debates over climate change solutions. Shell has been responsive to shareholder accountability efforts in the past, according to Reuters.
To the extent that the fight against climate change demands changes in a wide variety of consumer behaviors, fossil fuel divestment will have a role to play, even if its most vehement supporters may exaggerate its impact in order to rally support. Identifying better strategies for divestment campaigns will be a crucial factor in ensuring their effectiveness.
A big new poll has raised some optimism that public opinion on climate change is finally catching up to the science. But the poll is a welcome reflection that more and more people understand the seriousness of the climate threat, some caution is merited — for two important reasons.
Among the adults polled by The New York Times, Stanford University, and Resources for the Future in January, a healthy majority — 78 percent — think global warming will be a serious problem for the United States (44 percent very serious; 34 percent somewhat serious). Even among Tea Party supporters, 59 percent put themselves in one of the "serious" camps.
As the poll breakdown shows, even though people more clearly recognize that climate change will be a problem, they still consider the threat something that will happen to "other" people, either those living in foreign countries or future generations. When asked if climate change will hurt them personally, more people are likely to say "a little" or "not at all" than "a great deal" or "a lot."
This persistent view that the worst effects are far into the future is not necessarily inaccurate. As reports from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and World Bank indicate, even at current rates, the worst effects manifest themselves at temperature levels that we will only begin reaching at midcentury, even under a business-as-usual (no policy changes) scenario.
However, because the effects of climate change are cumulative, and the transitions needed to prevent the worst effects involve large-scale changes to our economy, it is precisely now that action is needed. And even if the worst effects are still a generation away, there are still many effects that we are seeing right now.
The Risky Business Project, co-chaired by Michael Bloomberg, Henry Paulson, and Tom Steyer, is dedicated to demonstrating that while climate change is having immediate economic effects, for business as well as nations, time is still on our side. Doing something now, they argue, would be more effective and less expensive than doing something later, as investments and policy changes made today will pay much bigger dividends than waiting to play catch-up.
That the public is still slow to realize this underscores the flaws in how the risks and benefits are being communicated.
Which brings us to the next problem: how to go about doing what is necessary. This challenge is entirely separate from convincing folks climate change is a threat, and the results are less than encouraging.
An overwhelming number of respondents (80 percent) think the government should give tax breaks to companies that use more renewable energy. (To put this in perspective, a modified version of this idea is one of the two main components of Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott's climate change plan — which is much maligned.) Nearly as many (78 percent) would support a federally mandated limit on greenhouse gas emissions, which is the closest analog to the Obama administration's Clean Power Plan.
Unfortunately, far fewer people said that they would tolerate an increase to their electric bills, or an increase to the gas tax to discourage emissions from transportation (a large slice of the American greenhouse gas footprint). This suggests that public tolerance for policies on climate change are household cost sensitive in a way that is not true for policies that are perceived to affect individual companies.
This is disappointing, for two reasons. The first is that improving energy efficiency is an important factor in whether the United States can truly reduce emissions over time. But the fight on efficiency cannot be won if it is all carrot and no stick. Higher gas taxes discourage fuel consumption and encourage important changes in the American vehicle fleet (fewer sport-utility vehicles, more subcompacts and hybrids).
The second reason is that approval on climate change policies may be related to perception of overall economic well-being in a way that is not conducive to long-term policy planning.
Consider past polling on the seriousness of climate change before and after the 2008 financial crisis. According to the Pew Research Center, the percentage of people who saw climate change as a "very serious" problem polled in the low-40 percent range between 2006 and 2008. By October 2009, however, that number had plummeted 10 percentage points, as concerns over the beginning of a recession took hold in the public imagination. While people were still thinking of climate change as a threat, fears about general economic well-being took precedence.
Will the American people similarly lose any appetite for aggressive climate action in the face of the next crisis? The numbers in this most recent poll are enough to give one cause for concern.
When parts of a plant, such as dead leaves, flowers or ripe fruit detach, the process is called
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