Not just faster than apartheid divestment; faster than divestment from tobacco, armaments, and others: fossil fuel divestment. It’s not about direct reduction of market capitalization; it’s about making it socially unacceptable to buy from stigmatized companies, and it works, and it’s working faster than ever for fossil fuels. Oh, and fossil fuel companies are a tiny sliver of university endowments, so ditching them is pain free, especially now that fossil fuel stock prices are not rising while solar stocks skyrocket (and nuclear stocks don’t). Go fossil free, go VSU.

Stranded Assets and the Fossil Fuel Divestment Campaign: What Does Divestment Mean for the Valuation of Fossil Fuel Assets? 8 October 2013 | Authors: Atif Ansar, Ben Caldecott, James Tilbury

Damian Carrington wrote for the Guardian Monday 7 October 2013 Campaign against fossil fuels growing, says study: Investors being persuaded to take their money out of fossil fuel sector, according to University of Oxford study,

A campaign to persuade investors to take their money out of the fossil fuel sector is growing faster than any previous divestment campaign and could cause significant damage to coal, oil and gas companies, according to a study from the University of Oxford.

The report compares the current fossil fuel divestment campaign, which has attracted 41 institutions since 2010, with those against tobacco, apartheid in South Africa, armaments, gambling and pornography. It concludes that the direct financial impact of such campaigns on share prices or the ability to raise funds is small but the reputational damage can still have major financial consequences.

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