Friday, February 22, 2013

Divestment, calling a spade a spade.

On dozens of college campuses student bodies are voting for the college to divest from fossil fuel and gun/ammo makers stocks.  It's working.  Already some schools are instructing their endowment managers to sell stock and bonds in these companies.
Even more powerful, a number of cities have done the same, instructing city employee retirement fund managers to divest.  City retirement funds are among the the biggest stock holders in the nation.
If you are in a position to speak up about such a retirement funds investments, or a college's investments, or unions, do so.
Divestment, all these institutions selling stock will not collapse those markets, others will buy in where a good asset exists.  But due to the overall size, gun makers may see some long term decline from this, fossil fuel, so large it will not.  But like the multi-year divestment of South African stocks years ago, divestment stigmatizes these companies, the shine wears off when these groups renounce them in this way, it's known then they are not good corporate citizens.  It hampers their PR efforts, their recruiting, even some financial institutions will turn from working with them.

The funny thing is, a few simple acts could put this fire out, but they won't do it.  Gun manufacturers could knock off the crazy shit and return to sane products and practices, and fossil fuel could stop harassing and undermining science while investing in renewables instead of pollution.

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