THEY have chained themselves to the White House fence, blockaded Australian coal ports with dugout canoes and mooned the offices of a British minister. But protesters from a green pressure group called 350.org have had their greatest success doing something far duller: petitioning institutional investors to “divest” from stocks and bonds issued by firms that peddle fossil fuels. Opponents of divestment marshal arguments from theory and practice to pooh-pooh such campaigns. But that is both to misunderstand the goals of the activists and to dodge hard questions about how best to serve the interests of their clients.
Denigrators of divestment point out, rightly, that selling a security does not materially reduce the price if there are lots of buyers still out there. Any buyer is likely to have fewer qualms about the firm or country concerned than the seller, so the pressure for immediate change may actually dissipate as divestment proceeds. That is why some fund managers, like Hermes, argue that engagement with polluting firms is better than walking away. In the case of fossil fuels, the sceptics add, divestment has the wrong target: state-owned firms...
from The Economist: Leaders http://ift.tt/1IfSSXH
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