ABSTRACT
This chapter provides an introduction to fossil fuel divestment. Carbon budgets revealed that the way fossil fuel companies are valued—based on the size of their reserves—is deeply flawed. Canada saw its first university fully divest from fossil fuels in 2017 with the successful campaign launched by the organization “ULaval sans fossiles” at Universite Laval in Quebec. The University of Toronto and York decisions were hardly unique in the Canadian university landscape. The chapter discusses how the movement emerged from a relatively new way of looking at the climate crisis. Divestment grew out of a new way of looking at the problem of climate change. Climate change goals have tended to be communicated, overly abstractly, in terms of percentage reductions relative to a baseline year by a certain deadline. The chapter explains the climate justice-based rationale behind the divestment strategy, describes the growth of the movement and the effect divestment is likely to have on investment returns.
