Climate action and corporate stigma - Is fossil fuel divestment desirable?

In recent years, climate action has seen the birth of a new campaign. The fossil fuel divestment movement aims at encouraging investors to divest their fossil fuel endowments as a means to stigmatize the fossil fuel industry. The stigma would dismantle the industry’s social license to operate and therefore influence them into taking corrective actions. In this thesis, I argue that the movement is ineffective in stigmatizing the industry as of today, due to counter actions embedded in the industry’s culture. This makes the stigma unlikely to emerge in the near future, thus making the campaign relatively inefficient. Indeed, the nature of corporate stigmatization implies a diffusion aspect, that is critical for the campaign, as targeted companies represent less than 10% of fossil fuel reserves. Furthermore, I elaborate on the normative aspect of the divestment movement and find im-morality in the decision to divest on the grounds that it denies the moral duty of investors to act like owners. In fine, I conclude on the rather surprising note that divesting from fossil fuels is less-than-desirable as it seems both inefficient and immoral.