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I am currently involved in the climate change movement and am a veteran of the 1980s South Africa divestment movement. After years of study I came to realize that while it was a decent organizing tool it is financially ineffective. Any stock that is artificially undervalued due to divestment will be immediately snapped up in the global marketplace by those without moral restraint, thus instantly negating any supposed gains.

It's not possible to organize around the tactic without misleading folks as to its real world effect. Stock prices and investor profits just aren't going to change as a result.

This is even more true for fossil fuel companies than it was for the relatively limited number of corporations that were very active in South Africa. Enough of the entire world divesting from fossil fuel stocks to make the bosses sweat? C'mon.

At my school we created an uproar, did not achieve divestment, and had exactly the same PR effect on South Africa and its corporate benefactors as those schools that did divest. I eventually wished that we'd pushed the school for shareholder resolutions, product and intellectual boycotts, and other corporate campaign strategies - things we likely would have won and that would have had a more direct impact on the corporations and South Africa.

My two cents worth.