WHAT’S WRONG WITH FOSSIL FUEL DIVESTMENT?

Never underestimate the environmental movement’s ability to squander its resources. Today’s fossil fuel divestment campaign is the latest example of fecklessness, and yet another demonstration—as if we needed one—that greens don’t understand the problems they’re trying to fix. . . .

College students campaigning against fossil fuel investments might be best served by putting down their picket signs and enrolling in an Economics 101 course. People invest money to grow their wealth, and while a family like the Rockefellers may be wealthy enough to assuage its guilt for how it made its money by publicly divesting from fossil fuel holdings, the rest of us can’t afford that luxury.

Take the time to read Gapper’s piece in full. It gets to the heart of the problem with the divestment movement: its rampant inconsistencies. By taking on something as enormous as investments in brown energy, greens have not only set themselves up for failure, they’ve also started tallying up opportunity costs. Public appetite for green initiatives isn’t limitless, and neither is the funding or media attention these causes du jour receive.

But greens are nothing if not experts at finding ways to attack problems from the wrong angles, whether it’s anti-Keystone activism or the Global Climate Treaty or divestment.

If people keep choosing means that seem unsuited to their ends, consider that you might not understand their ends.