Christian Parenti critiques 350's carbon divestment campaign

[wtmusic]

1. Parenti is clueless as to how a stock's price affects company policy.

Dumping the stock of a company makes its value go down. The owners of the company, the stockholders, are a motley crew - everyone from little old ladies to mutual fund managers. The little old ladies don't know what's driving the stock price down; they cluck their tongue and make a note to call their brokers.

The mutual fund managers know very well what makes a stock price go down, as do the big shareholders. So while 200 sold shares of Exxon-Mobil won't mean squat to CEO Rex Tillerson, 50 million dumped shares will. For him alone that's potentially hundreds of thousands of dollars lost, and everyone else on the board. That hurts every shareholder, and if it hurts enough he not only loses money but his job.

The rest of Parenti's suggestions are wishing upon a star. Of course it would be great if government used its "vast spending power to create a market for green energy". How do you pull that off? How do you get the EPA to take "robust action"?

It's not that we don't know what needs to be done, it's that we don't know how to get the ball rolling. McKibben's idea is a great way for people to take control of carbon from a grassroots level.