To add some personal flavour to the divestment issue, we asked one of the architects of the movement – climate activist, author and 350.org co-founder, Bill McKibben – to chat with us about how he invests his own money for our inaugural Money Talks column.

What sparked your initial idea of asking institutions to drop their investments in fossil fuels?

Naomi Klein and I were reading the same somewhat obscure report from a London-based think tank, Carbon Tracker Initiative. It showed that these companies had far, far more carbon in their reserves than any scientist thought we could ever burn. Both of us thought: viewed this way these are rogue companies, trying to profit off unfathomable destruction. Since we’d both been active in the anti-apartheid divestment movement a generation earlier, we figured maybe it might be appropriate here.

Who was the first person you were able to convince to divest?

Pride of place goes to tiny Unity College in rural Maine. The president got up during one of the roadshows of the Do The Math tour to make his announcement  – an $8 million endowment, I think. Now that we’re at $8 trillion it doesn’t seem so big, but it got us going.

What’s been your biggest win so far?

The Norwegian sovereign wealth fund? The nation of Ireland? New York City’s pension fund? Half the universities in the UK? The first win that really started to change things fast was perhaps the Rockefeller family, who divested their charities. If the original oil fortune was done with oil…

Why do you think there are so few Canadian organizations on board with divestment?

Because Canadians, pleasant and conflict-averse, can’t bring themselves to say to Alberta, ‘you simply can’t dig up all that oil and burn it, it by itself will use up a third of the planet’s carbon budget.’  So they’ve never been able to really grapple with climate change. Look at the tragic positions that Justin Trudeau has gotten in trying.

The Canadian responsible investing sector has focused more on shareholder engagement to push for change from the inside. What are your thoughts on this tactic?

Works with many kinds of companies, but not fossil fuel ones. Because there’s not a small flaw in the business model–the flaw is the business model.

Petroleum producers have, not surprisingly, tried to discredit the divestment movement. What’s the biggest myth being propagated about divestment?

That it doesn’t accomplish anything. The industry has pushed it with great diligence (which should tell you something right there) but by now we’ve seen Shell having to declare it a material risk and Peabody Coal listing it as a factor in its bankruptcy. In Politico a few weeks ago, one coal exec after another explained they couldn’t raise capital anymore because there were too few funds left willing to invest

Your focus has been on convincing institutions to divest, but many individuals reading this will be thinking of doing the same. Do you think the ripple made by an individual’s decision to buy or sell a stock or fund makes any difference in the grand scheme of things?

Well, it’s more important to move institutionally, but to the extent that changing your light bulb matters, divestment would matter more.

Have you divested your personal investments to reflect your values?

I’m a…writer and volunteer organizer. What investments I have reflect my values.

Can you give us a rundown on which investments you hold?

Nothing that burns.

How has investing with your values worked out for you financially?

Living in the woods has worked out for me financially.

How has divesting worked out financially for those governments and institutions that have chosen this tactic?

Yes, anyone who divested has made out like bandits – the fossil fuel sector has badly underperformed the larger market. So, for instance, the New York State pension fund would have $19k more dollars per pensioner had it done the right thing when all this started.

What’s next for the divestment movement?

I think we’re aiming for $10 trillion by next year.

The post Bill McKibben on investing in “nothing that burns” appeared first on Corporate Knights.

Today, a pipeline considered a shoe-in by the oil industry is long delayed and likely to never get built, while more than 220 institutions – from pension funds to universities to philanthropic foundations – have committed to take their money out of coal, oil and natural gas.

Given McKibben’s role in creating and leading this fast-growing movement, it may come as little surprise that the father of 350.org is the most influential Twitter user in the environmental community, according the Top 100 Eco-Influencers on Twitter ranking released today by Corporate Knights and Brandwatch, the social media analytics company.

Guardian columnist George Monbiot ranked a close second, followed by environmental activist and artist Irina Tikhomirova and Christiana Figueres, executive secretary of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC).

To determine the top 100 more than 100,000 Twitter users actively posting on green issues were studied, including mainstream individuals who have built a large following within the global environmental audience and professionals who work with and tweet about environmental issues. Each was awarded a “Green Score” on a scale of 1 to 100, calculated according to three different measurements: Authority, Audience and Activity. (See Top 100 list below, or click here to see it on twitter).

McKibben, for example, has 149,000 followers and actively posts. But he also has highly influential followers, which indicates his strong authority and influence in the environmental community. How many times his posts have been liked and commented on also impacts the final score.

“Social activism is one of the most powerful ways to build awareness, educate and affect change,” said Benj Pettit, Brandwatch data scientist. “The Top 100 Eco-Influencers reflect those who understand the power of social to influence and build support.”

Toby Heaps, chief executive of Corporate Knights, said the Top 100 list was created so people had an easy way to follow those with the “greenest street cred” on Twitter.

The highest-ranking Canadian was social activist and author Naomi Klein, who is joined on the list by Green Party leader Elizabeth May, best-selling author Margaret Atwood, environmental artist Franke James, activist Tzeporah Berman, economics professor Andrew Leach, federal NDP leader Thomas Mulcair, and green economy evangelist Jim Harris.

Former U.S. vice-president Al Gore is among the highest-profile names on the list, along with actors Leonardo DiCaprio and Mark Ruffalo, Tesla and SpaceX founder Elon Musk, and billionaire businessmen Michael Bloomberg, Tom Steyer, Richard Branson and Bill Gates.

Journalists dominated the list, many of them having written for Corporate Knights in the past, including Monbiot, David Roberts of Vox (formerly Grist), freelancer Marc Gunther, Greentech Media editor Stephen Lacey, and Wall Street Journal columnist Christopher Mims.

Michael Mann, director of the Penn State Earth System Science Center, was the top-ranked climate scientist at eighth place, followed by the Pacific Institute’s Peter Gleick, IPCC vice-chair JPascal van Ypersele, and Gavin Schmidt at NASA.

Interested in following any of the Top 100 Eco-Influencers? We created a twitter list to make it easier for you.

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