This year’s Global Divestment Day(s) fall on February 13 and 14. The idea is for hip people to pressure universities and other institutional investors to divest themselves of any holdings related to fossil fuels. Yet even on its own terms, the divestment movement is symbolism with no substance. Even if we stipulate the projections in the leading climate models, the divestment movement wouldn’t affect global emissions and hence it would have no effect on climate change. Indeed, all it would do is make endowment funds suffer lower returns with higher risk.
