Divestment: a tool for climate justice
Justice
The countries and people most affected by climate change tend to be those least responsible for causing climate change. Divestment shifts the policy attention ‘upstream’ to corporations who hold enormous carbon reserves and have lobbied to exploit those reserves even when it negatively affects the world’s most vulnerable.
Ethics
Investing in a company is essentially betting on their long-term success. Investing in fossil fuels is a bet against climate action, a bet against global saviour, and a bet against the transition to a decarbonized economy. If it’s wrong to wreck the climate, it’s wrong to invest in that wreckage.
Finance
Fossil fuels are poor investments. Since the Divest Dal campaign began in 2013, many of Dalhousie’s investment in the fossil fuel sector have lost half their value. Several companies have gone bankrupt, resulting in a complete lost for Dalhousie and the beneficiaries of the endowment - students.
