Growing up in the 1990’s, the creek I played in carried aluminum cans in its waters.
In school, I learned about pollution and recycling. Connecting the dots I was taught
to see, I thought that if I recycled enough cans, I could stop the environmental
problems everybody was talking about. The creek I loved would stay beautiful.
My teachers seldom talked about the role of money in environmental destruction.
The economic factors driving that destruction were treated as unchangeable. While
kids like me learned to recycle, untold fortunes were invested in plundering the
Earth for profit.
This booklet introduces some of the economic systems related to climate change,
focusing on divestment. Part 1 offers a general overview of divestment. Part 2 talks
about financial institutions’ relationships to fossil fuels. Part 3 examine stocks. Part
4 is about pairing divestment with alternatives for re-investment.
How Does Divestment Work?
by Jeff Wagner with layinggroundwork.org
Since the 1980’s, our world has moved towards a radical kind of capitalism: one
with completely deregulated global markets. It’s a model that produces profits,
but has no morals.
The result is predictable: money concentrated into fewer and fewer hands,
often invested in destructive industries. Even as the fossil fuel industry destroys
the Earth, the foundation of our economy and our lives, it holds a huge
economic pull. Like gravity, the more money it amasses, the more attractive it
becomes. A market with no morals acts selfishly and shortsightedly, choosing
immediate profit over all else, destroying the Earth.
Escaping Money’s Gravitational Pull
Part 1: The Foundations of Divestment
“To turn $100 into $110 is work. To turn $100 million into $110 million is inevitable.”
-Edgar Bronfman
The easiest way for citizens at large to put companies out of business is with a boycott, a
coordinated effort to stop buying a business’ goods and services. A full boycott would be a total
shift away from fossil fuels: exactly what climate scientists say we need in order to address
climate change.
Unfortunately, boycotting fossil fuels is not possible all at once. We built our society to depend
on fossil fuels, and if we stopped extracting fossil fuels overnight, the global economy would
collapse. People would starve, suffer, and die. The transition will take time.
During the transition period, fossil fuels remain profitable investments. In an unregulated
market, the economic drivers that support extractive industries like fossil fuels are still there.
As fossil fuels continue to thrive, they maintain a huge influence over the politics of climate
change, further extending their use.
Our economic system is stacked against the climate.
Boycotting Fossil Fuels