Should we divest from the fossil fuel industry?

In the last decades, the awareness, belief and recognition of global warming and climate change has significantly increased among the public debate and the scientific sphere. Nations around the world have recognised the urgency to take actions and have agreed that the rise in temperature must be kept below 2°C. Lately it is the fossil fuel divestment movement that has gained a lot of attention for its active role in the fossil fuel discourse. Its aim is to tackle global warming by urging investors to divest their shareholdings from fossil fuel companies. Indeed, the movement seeks to expose the unsustainable business model of the fossil fuel industry as well as its role in global warming. To encourage fossil fuel divestment, the movement invokes a variety of reasons. One of these reasons stresses the moral obligation of investors to divest from the fossil fuel industry and will constitute the object of this thesis. This thesis will be divided into three parts: a theoretical part and a practical part. The theoretical part will assess the moral case of fossil fuel divestment by analysing the fossil fuel industry and fossil fuel investments. The practical part will aim at better understand some real-life experiences of educational institutions that have divested from the fossil fuel industry.