On this day, in 2015, global divestment hit the headlines (see press release here). Divestment was one of those flavour of the month style campaigns where you try to leverage one part of a broader system to cause bigger change, in this case, trying to get institutional investors to take their money out of fossil fuel stocks, and it feels good. It feels like you’re putting a face on where the money goes, to quote. Marge Piercy’s Vida “Keep naming the enemy: put faces on where the money goes.”
Why this matters
But like any tactical demand, it after a while it gets stale, it gets predictable, it gets less attention in the media. And that means fewer people turn up next time, which means the media is even less interested. And you go into a death spiral. And then along comes a new tactic. And so it goes. And that is why I’m talking today about divestment. (Again, I’m not shitting on the people who poured their heart and soul into it. I just think we need to understand that it’s a tactic, and it has a shelf-life.)
What happened next?
People don’t talk about divestment so much anymore. For a while everyone started trying to get local authorities and governments to declare climate emergencies. Now that’s dying down. We’re waiting for the next big thing. The end of the day. We need this historical and sociological perspective. But we mustn’t let those perspectives demoralise us and give us an excuse for doing nothing.