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In October 2014, the Australian National University announced that it was divesting from seven fossil fuel-intensive companies. This announcement sparked an unprecedented response in the community, both positive and negative. We examine this decision, the divestment movement in general, the science behind the issue and strategic responses, both policy and organisational. We argue that a confluence between policy responses and organisational responses is beginning to emerge that will lead to greater action on climate change.

The 2015 Paris Agreement set a global warming limit of 2°C above preindustrial levels. Corporations play an important role in achieving this objective, and methods have recently been developed to map global climate targets to specific industries, and individual corporations within those industries. In this article, we assess whether Sustainability ratings capture corporate performance in meeting the 2°C target. We analyze nine rating schemes used by investors and three commonly used in academic studies. Most rating schemes do consider corporate greenhouse gas emissions in their analysis, whereas only a minority scale emissions by factors that have the potential to allow benchmarking against science-based targets. None take the final step of mapping climate indicators against the 2°C target. Furthermore, we find a lack of consistency in the climate change ratings of the databases used in academic studies. These results are concerning in the context of being able to meet global climate change goals.

Purpose -The purpose of this paper is to examine whether portfolios comprising high-ranked corporate social performance (CSP) firms out/underperform portfolios comprised of low-ranked CSP firms. The authors employed a US sample covering the period 1998-2007. Design/methodology/approach -In the context of the Fama and French model augmented by momentum and industry factors, the authors test the significance of the alpha for a CSP difference portfolio, defined as high-ranked minus low-ranked CSP stocks. Findings -The results are consistent with the "no-linkage" hypothesis, which argues that no significant difference in the risk-adjusted performance is expected between high-and low-ranked CSP-formed portfolios. Furthermore, little evidence was found that high-or low-ranked CSP-formed portfolios, irrespective of the portfolio formation type, systematically differ with regard to performance, size, book-to-market or momentum factors. Originality/value -The authors employ sustainability CSP rankings that focus on environmental, social and governance (ESG) materiality factors, in contrast to many prior studies that solely use KLD ratings or just focus on a subarea of CSP. Moreover, the authors' dataset considerably improves upon previous studies employing similar data in which individual company rankings are not available.

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