Divestment worked in South Africa, it will work on Big Oil

Regarding “Why divesting from oil companies won’t affect climate change” (Letters to the Editor, SFChronicle.com, Feb. 15): If, as Doug Orr’s letter suggests, divestment is not effective, why did the CEOs of major fossil fuel companies, at their 2018 Oil and Money conference, discuss, “What more does the industry need to do … to combat the growing fossil fuel divestment movement?”

Fossil fuels are a financially irresponsible investment. Asset managers overseeing trillions of dollars have already shed their industry holdings. Moreover, divestment by large investors like CalPERS and CalSTRS stigmatizes the industry and takes away its social license to continue emitting vast amounts of carbon.

Divestment from South Africa established that this type of action will draw attention to the harms of fossil fuels and attaches reputational risk to the lenders that finance oil company operations.

I commend the pension funds for using their ownership to require firms in other sectors to reduce their carbon footprint, but it is naive to believe that pensions can influence a fossil fuel industry that House Oversight and Reform Committee

chair Rep. Carolyn B. Maloney said, “has no real plans to clean up its act and is barreling ahead with plans to pump more dirty fuels for decades to come.”

We are in a climate emergency. Our pension funds need to stop funding the industry that has caused and exacerbates this crisis.

Kudos to Feinstein

My first thought when I heard that Sen. Dianne Feinstein would not seek re-election was, “Thank God, she has stayed too long at the ball.”

Then I reflected back to Nov. 27, 1978. San Francisco Supervisor Dan White had just murdered Mayor George Moscone

and Supervisor Harvey Milk at City Hall. Feinstein was the first to arrive at Moscone’s side as he lay dying. Later on that dark day, Feinstein, then president of the Board of Supervisors, stood on the steps of City Hall — young, nervous and certainly scared — and spoke to a city on edge. As police sirens wailed in the night, her words and composure helped calm its heartbroken and rattled citizens.

Of course, that was all a long time ago.

Today, we desperately need fresh ideas, greater diversity, collaboration and civility in the nation’s capital. It is way past time for a change.

But as we judge Feinstein’s accomplishments — and her failures — let’s not forget the young woman who stepped up in the worst of times to serve her constituents with a combination of grace and toughness.

Enjoy retirement, senator.

Dida Nuswantara/AFP/Getty Images 2021 Smoke rises from a Pertamina oil company depot in Cilacap, Indonesia, in 2021 after a fire was extinguished at the plant.