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It worked in the 1980's during South Africa's reign of Apartheid, why can't it work this decade to target Climate Change?

It was a single word tucked into a presidential speech. It went by so fast that most Americans probably never heard it, much less took the time to wonder what it meant.

But to certain young ears, the word had the shock value of a rifle shot. The reference occurred late in President Obama's climate speech at Georgetown University two weeks ago, in the middle of this peroration:

"Convince those in power to reduce our carbon pollution. Push your own communities to adopt smarter practices. Invest. Divest. Remind folks there's no contradiction between a sound environment and strong economic growth."

That injunction to "divest" was, pretty clearly, a signal to the thousands of college students who have been manning the barricades for nearly a year now, urging their colleges to rid their endowments of stock in fossil-fuel companies as a way of forcing climate change higher on the national political agenda.

"The president of the United States knows we exist, and he likes what we're doing," Marissa Solomon of the University of Michigan wrote soon after. Other students recounted leaping to their feet or nearly falling off their chairs when the president uttered the word.

Chris Hayes, the host of a program on MSNBC who is young enough and smart enough to have caught the reference instantly, said on Twitter that "'invest, divest' is the most crypto-radical line the president has ever uttered."

Let's hope that he's not as crypto-radical when it comes to Climate Change as he is when it comes to spying on U.S. citizens vis a vis the NSA.

One can hope, right?

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