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Comment by noneckbeard | Hacker News Reader

Investors divesting from fossil fuels sounds a lot like sanctions in that they “don’t work until they work.”[1] It would take an overwhelming number of investors to make divestment really hurt, which is unlikely. And I definitely agree that focusing on supporting climate change impact is better than starving the polluters. But it seems intellectually dishonest to say that divestors are “wasting their time.” And there’s no reason you can’t do both.

1. https://qz.com/1072581/sanctions-dont-work-until-they-do-the...

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Wouldn’t it be better to reduce demand? Even just now where supply was literally taken out with missles (or were they drones?) that doesn’t affect how much fossil fuel is used. Why would divestment work any better?

To reduce demand you should either create cheaper ways to store alternative energy or make carbon based fuels more expensive with a carbon tax.

Can’t it be both? Those aren’t mutually exclusive, and in fact are hardly even related in terms of implementation.

And taking out supply to drive up cost of fossil fuel will absolutely have an impact. At least a few people will opt for the fuel economy version of their new car in the next few days after seeing the new sticker price of a gallon of gas.

>Investors divesting from fossil fuels sounds a lot like sanctions in that they “don’t work until they work.”[1]

Sure, but you can say that about any cause. Sounding like something is vague, and thats the larger point from the article. People need to quantify the actual impact of their actions w.r.t. divestment. Whereas, its easier to quantify the impact of other more positive/creative actions (e.g. transitioning from petroleum to clean energy).

>And there’s no reason you can’t do both.

Oh, there are more than two ideas that activists have. There is "no reason" you can't do a third, fourth, fifth, sixth, seventh and more and more. You only have limited resources to expend here - your free time, energy and motivation.

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