Treating oil companies as pariahs will kill off any green revolution

When fossil fuel divestment was merely a gesture by universities, the Church of England and the Prince of Wales it was easy to ignore; it is rather less so when the head of the world’s largest fund management company says that he is going to start ‘exiting investments’ in coal producers and other companies he claims represent a ‘high sustainability–related risk’. That is what Larry Fink of Blackrock, which manages £5 trillion worth of investors’ money, did in a letter to business leaders this week, citing last year’s climate change protests as evidence that attitudes were changing.

This fits a more general trend of ‘woke capitalism’, whereby companies that would not dream of taking sides in party political battles enter the culture wars. Much of the fight takes place in the workplace, especially in human resources departments, which have started introducing some of the crazier ideas to have fomented on university campuses.