The Hill
Jeff Eshelman
When environmentalist activist Bill McKibben and Senator Bernie Sanders(I-Vt.), among others, take to the stage the day after the State of the Union as part of a “climate resistance” event, they will no doubt claim the fossil fuel divestment movement is winning.
The facts and failures of this past year tell a very different story.
Divestment campaigns have suffered stunning defeats in cities and states across the country, including Vermont, Seattle, and most recently San Francisco. On college campuses last year, divestment chapters started to fold at several schools including Swarthmore, New York University, and the University of Colorado at Boulder. Usually, as in the case of NYU, students gave up once the university determined that divestment is inconsistent with the university’s legal duty to “invest funds in a manner that is prudent and in the University’s best interest.”
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