scholarly journals Shadows of Divestment: The Complications of Diverting Fossil Fuel Finance

2020 ◽  
Vol 20 (2) ◽  
pp. 3-11
Author(s):  
Kate J. Neville
Keyword(s):  
Fossil Fuels ◽  
Fossil Fuel ◽  
Commodity Trade ◽  
Global Environmental Politics ◽  
Global Environmental ◽  
Climate Action ◽  
The Status ◽  
Political Economic ◽  
Two Sectors ◽  
Social Damage

This forum article offers a critical assessment of the strategy of divestment from fossil fuels as climate action, considering the unintended or spillover consequences of reinvestment in other industries. With a focus on two sectors—agriculture and renewable energy—it examines how reinvestment to achieve competitive financial returns might exacerbate non-emissions-based environmental and social damage. The analysis draws on established and emerging research in global environmental politics on the political economy of commodity trade to sound a cautionary note about divestment, arguing that the strategy can maintain the status quo as readily as it can disrupt systems of power. A focus on divestment addresses a crucial immediate problem, but without a critical look at reinvestment and the current political economic order, activists could be reinforcing the same systems of environmental and social damage they are aiming to dismantle.

Energy, Environment, and Security: Critical Links in a Post-Peak World

2010 ◽  
Vol 10 (4) ◽  
pp. 79-100 ◽  
Author(s):  
Shane Mulligan
Keyword(s):  
Human Ecology ◽  
Energy Security ◽  
Fossil Fuel ◽  
Energy Resources ◽  
Ecological Security ◽  
Fossil Energy ◽  
Political Analysis ◽  
Global Environmental Politics ◽  
Global Environmental ◽  
Energy Environment

Energy supplies are central to human ecology and key to the sustainability of human communities, but the decline of fossil fuel resources is largely ignored in global environmental politics. Most political analysis of energy focuses on state-centered “energy security” while largely overlooking discourses of environmental or ecological security. Yet energy and the environment are intimately connected; in the 1970s and 1980s, energy resources were seen as very much a part of the environment to be secured, while today fossil energy is seen as an evident threat to the environment, especially through the medium of climate change. This article surveys the changing relationships among energy, the environment, and security, and suggests a framework for examining the discursive forces that have affected such changes. This framework offers guidance toward developing a more ecologically informed approach to energy and (state, global, and human) security under conditions of scarce and declining global fossil fuel supplies.

Divest–Invest: A Moral Case for Fossil Fuel Divestment

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alex Lenferna
Keyword(s):  
Global Warming ◽  
Moral Responsibility ◽  
Fossil Fuels ◽  
Fossil Fuel ◽  
Climate Action ◽  
Moral Case ◽  
Moral Arguments ◽  
Fossil Fuel Industry ◽  
Fuel Industry ◽  
Do So

This chapter begins by providing a brief overview of the divestment movement and the carbon bubble. It then argues that in order to avoid grave, substantial, and unnecessary harm, there is a collective moral responsibility to transition away from fossil fuels in line with the Paris Agreement’s targets of keeping global warming well below 2°C above pre-industrial levels with the aspiration of holding warming to 1.5°C. It uses that argument as the basis for the following three distinct but reinforcing moral arguments in favor of divesting from fossil fuels: (1) investing in fossil fuels contributes to grave, substantial, and unnecessary harm and injustice; (2) divesting from fossil fuels helps fulfill our moral responsibility to promote climate action; and (3) investing in fossil fuels morally tarnishes those who do so by making them complicit in the injustices of the fossil fuel industry. The chapter begins by providing a brief overview of the divestment movement and the carbon bubble.

scholarly journals Climate change and fossil fuel: An examination of risks for the energy industry and producer states

2017 ◽  
Vol 4 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jim Krane
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Natural Gas ◽  
Fossil Fuels ◽  
Fossil Fuel ◽  
Coal Industry ◽  
Low Carbon ◽  
Climate Action ◽  
Fossil Fuel Industry ◽  
Fuel Industry ◽  
Developed World

ABSTRACTThis article compiles and categorizes the various forms of climate risk facing the fossil fuel industry. The type and intensity of risk differs greatly among the three forms of fossil fuels, as well as between countries in the developing and developed world. The paper finds heightened risk for the coal industry and reduced risk for oil businesses, due to its lack of substitutes.Burning coal, oil, and natural gas is the source of two-thirds of the world’s emissions of greenhouse gases. Sales of these fuels also represent the economic underpinning of resource-rich countries and the world’s largest firms. As such, steps taken to abate emissions undermine commercial opportunities to monetize fossil fuel reserves. Risks to the industry correlate with progress on climate goals.This article analyzes recent literature on climate action strategy and finds that a new or intensified set of risks has arisen for the fossil fuel industry. These include government policies and legislation, financial restrictions among lenders and insurers, hostile legal and shareholder actions, changes in demand and geopolitics, as well as the onset of new competitive forces among states and technologies.The exposure of carbon-based businesses to these risks and the potential for loss is neither distributed uniformly across the sector, nor adheres to a uniform time scale. Shareholder-owned firms in the developed world will be incentivized to react sooner than large state-owned resource owners in developing countries. The fates of the three fossil fuels also appear likely to play out differently. Demand for oil appears insulated by its lack of viable substitutes, while coal businesses are already undergoing climate-related action, pushed by decreasing social acceptance and constraining financial regulation. At the other end of the spectrum, climate action has improved the medium-term viability of low-carbon natural gas. What appears clear is that, as effects of climate change grow more pronounced, the industry faces a future that is less accepting of current practices.

scholarly journals Why Petroleum Did Not Save the Whales

2017 ◽  
Vol 3 ◽  
pp. 237802311773921 ◽  
Author(s):  
Richard York
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Economic Theory ◽  
Social Change ◽  
Technological Change ◽  
Fossil Fuels ◽  
Fossil Fuel ◽  
Whale Oil ◽  
Technological Developments ◽  
Unanticipated Consequences ◽  
Political Economic

Ironically, even though fossil fuels provided substitutes for the main uses of whale oil, the rise of fossil fuel use in the nineteenth century served to increase the intensity of whaling. The connections between fossil fuels and whaling are an example of the unanticipated consequences that frequently come with technological change. I draw on political-economic theory to explain why fossil fuels served to escalate rather than eliminate whaling. The case of whaling highlights the limited potential for technological developments to help overcome environmental problems without concurrent political, economic, and social change that supports conservation.

scholarly journals Shifting Discourse on Climate and Sustainability: Key Characteristics of the Higher Education Fossil Fuel Divestment Movement

2020 ◽  
Vol 12 (23) ◽  
pp. 10069
Author(s):  
Dylan Gibson ◽  
Leslie A. Duram
Keyword(s):  
Higher Education ◽  
Text Analysis ◽  
Fossil Fuels ◽  
Fossil Fuel ◽  
Social Issues ◽  
Climate Justice ◽  
Key Characteristics ◽  
The Us ◽  
Climate Action ◽  
Facebook Pages

In the last decade, the fossil fuel divestment (FFD) movement has emerged as a key component of an international grassroots mobilization for climate justice. Using a text analysis of Facebook pages for 144 campaigns at higher education institutions (HEIs), this article presents an overview and analysis of the characteristics of the higher education (HE) FFD movement in the US. The results indicate that campaigns occur at a wide array of HEIs, concentrated on the east and west coasts. Primarily student led, campaigns set broad goals for divestment, while reinvestment is often a less clearly defined objective. Campaigns incorporate a mixture of environmental, social, and economic arguments into their messaging. Justice is a common theme, used often in a broad context rather than towards specific populations or communities impacted by climate change or other social issues. These insights contribute to the understanding of the HE FFD movement as ten years of campus organizing approaches. In particular, this study illustrates how the movement is pushing sustainability and climate action in HE and in broader society towards a greater focus on systemic change and social justice through campaigns’ hardline stance against fossil fuels and climate justice orientation.

scholarly journals TNO_CAMS high resolution European emission inventory 2000–2014 for anthropogenic CO<sub>2</sub> and future years following two different pathways

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hugo A. C. Denier van der Gon ◽  
Jeroen J. P. Kuenen ◽  
Greet Janssens-Maenhout ◽  
Ulrike Döring ◽  
Sander Jonkers ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
High Resolution ◽  
Fossil Fuels ◽  
Emission Inventory ◽  
Fossil Fuel ◽  
Isotopic Signature ◽  
Change Scenario ◽  
Emission Data ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
Climate Action

Abstract. The most important climate forcer over the period 1750–present is CO2 from fossil fuel combustion (IPCC, 2013). European countries that are Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) submit national greenhouse gas (GHG) inventories to the Climate Change secretariat. However, these reported emissions are annual totals and do not provide spatial or temporal patterns within the country. Recently the interest in high resolution CO2 emission data is growing, both from the side of the research community as well as cities that want to make tailored climate action plans. Here we present a model-ready historic emission inventory at high spatial resolution (~7×7 km) for UNECE-Europe for 15 consecutive years (2000–2014) providing CO2 from fossil fuels (CO2_ff) and CO2 from biofuels (CO2_bf) to support carbon cycle modelling and sub-national scale identification of emissions. Where available and considered fit for purpose, we have used CO2 estimates as reported by the Parties to UNFCCC. The data have been supplemented by other estimates, most notable from the IIASA GAINS model and the JRC EDGAR database to create a complete coverage. The growing importance of biofuel over the time 2000–2014 time period is clearly visible. This changes the isotopic signature of anthropogenic emissions which is important for quantifying fossil fuel emissions. The inventory is compatible with the TNO-MACC emission inventory for air pollutants (Kuenen et al., 2014) which can provide information on co-emitted species like CO and NOx. The dataset is complemented by two projections based on the CIRCE project scenarios and using the latest historic year (2014) as the starting point for projection. The scenarios include a business-as-usual and a climate change scenario. The projections provide a range of possible future emissions that can be used for sensitivity tests, for example when designing a possible future observational system. The annual grid-maps are available for the historical years 2000–2014 at https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.112889, and for the future years 2018–2050 at https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.1009519.

scholarly journals Likelihood of climate change pathways under uncertainty on fossil fuel resource availability

2016 ◽  
Vol 9 (8) ◽  
pp. 2482-2496 ◽  
Author(s):  
Iñigo Capellán-Pérez ◽  
Iñaki Arto ◽  
Josué M. Polanco-Martínez ◽  
Mikel González-Eguino ◽  
Marc B. Neumann
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Renewable Energy ◽  
Resource Availability ◽  
Entire Range ◽  
Fossil Fuels ◽  
Fossil Fuel ◽  
Renewable Energy Sources ◽  
Energy Sources ◽  
Fuel Resource ◽  
Climate Action

The consideration of the entire range of revised estimates of fossil fuels resources shows that their depletion is likely to occur during the 21st century accelerating the transition to renewable energy sources but not alleviating the need for urgent climate action.

Energy After COVID

2020 ◽  
Vol 119 (820) ◽  
pp. 317-322
Author(s):  
Michael T. Klare
Keyword(s):  
Renewable Energy ◽  
Electric Vehicles ◽  
Fossil Fuels ◽  
Fossil Fuel ◽  
White Collar ◽  
Peak Oil ◽  
Business Travel ◽  
Reduce Energy Consumption ◽  
The Cost ◽  
Energy Companies

By transforming patterns of travel and work around the world, the COVID-19 pandemic is accelerating the transition to renewable energy and the decline of fossil fuels. Lockdowns brought car commuting and plane travel to a near halt, and the mass experiment in which white-collar employees have been working from home may permanently reduce energy consumption for business travel. Renewable energy and electric vehicles were already gaining market share before the pandemic. Under pressure from investors, major energy companies have started writing off fossil fuel reserves as stranded assets that are no longer worth the cost of extracting. These shifts may indicate that “peak oil demand” has arrived earlier than expected.

African Sustainability Advocacy Against Extractivism

2015 ◽  
Vol 3 (7) ◽  
Author(s):  
Patrick Bond
Keyword(s):  
Social Reproduction ◽  
Fossil Fuels ◽  
Social Economic ◽  
Social Activism ◽  
Ecological Factors ◽  
Energy Economics ◽  
Extractive Industries ◽  
The One ◽  
Political Economic ◽  
Critical Challenge

<p class="p1"><span class="s2"><strong>Abstract </strong></span>| The challenge of interdisciplinary intellectual and strategic work in the extractive industries is particularly acute at the interface of research and social activism. Numerous social movements which are dedicated to sustainability fail to ‘connect the dots’ between their campaigns and broader political-economic and political-ecological visions<span class="s3"><strong>. </strong></span>This is becoming a critical challenge in Africa, where the extreme damage done by mining and fossil fuels has generated impressive resistance<span class="s3"><strong>.</strong></span>However, the one obvious place to link these critiques from African activists was the Alternative Mining Indaba in Cape Town in February 2015, and a survey of narratives at that event leads to pessimism about interdisciplinary politics. The potential for much greater impact and deeper critiques of unsustainable extractivism lies in greater attention to combining social reproduction and production (as do eco-feminists), and to tackling social, economic, political and ecological factors with a more explicit structuralist critique and practical toolkit<span class="s3"><strong>. </strong></span>Areas such as energy, economics and climate are ripe for linkages<span class="s3"><strong>. </strong></span>One reason for optimism is a climate justice declaration made by leading civil society activists in Maputo in April 2015.<strong></strong></p>

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