Economics and Climate Justice Activism: Assessing the Fossil Fuel Divestment Movement

dc.contributor.authorHansen, Tyler
dc.contributor.authorPollin, Robert
dc.contributor.departmentUniversity of Massachusetts Amherst
dc.contributor.departmentUniversity of Masachusetts Amherst
dc.date2023-09-24T07:50:02.000
dc.date.accessioned2024-04-26T20:00:47Z
dc.date.available2024-04-26T20:00:47Z
dc.date.issued2018-04
dc.description.abstractWe present an economic analysis of fossil fuel divestment as a strategy for advancing an effective global climate stabilization project. The basic question we ask is: how effective are campaigns to force various entities to sell their fossil fuel stock holdings likely to be in driving down CO2 emissions? We conclude that divestment campaigns, considered on their own, have not been especially effective as a means of significantly reducing CO2 emissions, and they are not likely to become more effective over time. We reach this conclusion both through an analysis of the available descriptive data on global divestment patterns as well as an econometric modeling exercise that evaluates the impact of divestment events on the stock market prices of fossil fuel companies. We reach this conclusion while also recognizing that fossil fuel divestment campaigns have several important virtues. Nevertheless, we conclude that most efforts now devoted to divestment campaigns would be better spent on more direct efforts to drive down fossil fuel consumption and CO2 emissions.
dc.identifier.doi10.7275/27273908
dc.identifier.urihttps://hdl.handle.net/20.500.14394/40138
dc.rightsAttribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International
dc.rights.urihttp://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/
dc.source.issue462
dc.source.statuspublished
dc.subjectEconomics
dc.titleEconomics and Climate Justice Activism: Assessing the Fossil Fuel Divestment Movement
dc.typeWorking Paper
digcom.contributor.authorHansen, Tyler
digcom.contributor.authorPollin, Robert
digcom.identifierperi_workingpapers/324
digcom.identifier.contextkey27273908
digcom.identifier.submissionpathperi_workingpapers/324
dspace.entity.typePublication
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