Fossil Fuel Divestment?

fossil fuel divestmentDid you know that there’s a concerted effort to encourage fossil fuel divestment? Well there’s an apparently strong group (among others) called “Fossil Free” ( that:

  1. “believe that educational and religious institutions, city and state governments, and other institutions that serve the public good should divest from fossil fuels”; and,

The movement seems to be gaining momentum.

I’ve seen divestment initiatives pop up in the press a few times lately. Most notably, this article in the Guardian: Pope Francis urged to back fossil fuel divestment campaign. It reports upon two groups, the Australian Religious Response to Climate Change (ARRCC) and the US based GreenFaith, that are calling on the Pope to back their efforts to divest from companies that profit from fossil fuels.

I can imagine most people thinking “yeah! that’s what we need to do!”, but the thinking behind this seems a bit flawed to me.

Why do they think fossil fuel divestment is necessary?

It seems that scientists believe that a safe upper limit for CO2 concentration in our atmosphere is 350 ppm (parts per million). The problem is that we are already at about 390 ppm and it’s probably an urgent priority to reverse this and get back below 350 ppm or the world as we know it will cease to function. See this 90 second video from

Even more worryingly, scientists believe we have already found more fossil fuels than we can afford to burn (I think fossil fuel companies would say that carbon capture and sequestration is the answer to this problem). I haven’t researched this much yet, so I can’t say how true this is, but it’s worrying none the less. Here’s an excerpt from the site:


Here are the three numbers you shouldn’t forget:




fossil fuel divestmentIs fossil fuel divestment the right thing?

If all of this is true, is it fair for us to just blame the fossil fuel companies and try and penalize them by removing investment from them? I don’t think so. People in general are going around using energy and burning fossil fuels like it’s their right and always thinking that climate change is someone else’s problem. Every single person and corporation can take ownership of this problem.

Shouldn’t we lead the way by reducing consumption?

Everyone can start today by reducing consumption. It may sound hard because people can easily say “but I need my car to get to work”. Reducing consumption doesn’t have to mean selling your car and buying a bicycle (although there’s nothing wrong with that), but we can start with small steps. It’s much easier for me to consider using 10% less. How can I use my car 10% less. How can I burn 10% less fuel per month? When I think of a 10% reduction, it sounds so much easier.

I’m trying to reduce my consumption overall by 10%. See Can I reduce fuel consumption by 10%? Once I’ve succeeded with a 10% reduction, I’ll start again, looking for another 10%.

fossil fuel divestment - Coal mining in an open pitWhere is your money invested?

Now, returning to the original point of this post, fossil fuel divestment. As I said, I don’t believe it’s right to blame the fossil fuel companies if we just carry on consuming fossil fuels at the same rate. So, step number 1 is to reduce our consumption. That’s a no brainer.

But then, it’s also a good idea to consider where our money is invested. In today’s society, most of us have somehow invested in “managed funds” and we have no real idea what our money is supporting. Recently I saw some of the damage being caused in Australia by a major mining company (see We need companies we can trust) and that made me think that I don’t really want to support them by investing in their company.

It’s a valid concern to check where our money is invested and make sure we’re supporting companies and activities that are supporting us (people and planet) in ways that we think are right. That’s a personal choice for all of us, but an important one to actually make and not just allow someone else to decide where our money goes.

What do you think about fossil  fuel divestment?

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