Students organize to push college to divest
By Min Kyung Jeon, The Dartmouth Staff
Published on Friday, January 25, 2013
Following the lead of students at over 200 other universities, including Columbia University, Harvard University and the University of Pennsylvania, Dartmouth students are mobilizing to encourage the College to divest from companies that contribute to global warming.
Many of these campaigns are partnered with the Fossil Free initiative, which is organized by the international environmental organization 350.org.
“We’re at Dartmouth because we want to get the best education possible so that we have the best future possible,” said Leehi Yona ’16, an organizer of the Dartmouth offshoot of Fossil Free. “We need to do everything in our power to reduce our impact on the environment.”
Yona said she and other organizers of the Dartmouth “Fossil Free” movement decided to launch their campaign after learning about 350.org.
Although the divestment campaign at Dartmouth has not officially begun, there has been a large amount of interest from students, alumni and campus environmental groups.
“We hope to collaborate on this issue with the entire Dartmouth community,” she said. “We think it’s an issue that transcends environmental awareness.”
Bill McKibben, founder of 350.org, said that he and seven Middlebury College students founded the website in 2008 to create a mass movement against climate change around the world. In his recent “Do the Math” tour, McKibben showed that the fossil fuel industry holds five times more carbon reserves than scientists say would be safe to burn. McKibben called for the top 200 fossil fuel companies, identified by the Carbon Tracker Institute, to pledge to keep 80 percent of their current reserves underground on the basis of the “three big numbers,” which state that in order to prevent a catastrophe, global temperatures cannot increase by more than two degrees Celsius and the world can only burn 565 more gigatons of the 2,795 gigatons of carbon reserves currently held by fossil fuel companies.
“Fossil fuel companies are sitting on a carbon bubble that will wreck us all if they are allowed to burn it,” McKibben said. “We need to confront them.”
Annie Laurie Mauhs-Pugh ’14, a co-coordinator of the nascent Dartmouth initiative, said that institutions would benefit from keeping these energy reserves underground, since those reserves would become even more valuable.
350.org’s New England for campus outreach coordinator Shea Riester said that Unity College and Hampshire College have already promised to divest their endowments of fossil fuel companies following student campaigns.
The first Fossil Free campaigns began last year and are growing rapidly.
“From two schools to 210 schools in just several months, the movement is going forward at an incredible pace,” Riester said. “It’s also coming up at just the right time, when the government truly needs to address climate change.”
Harvard University senior Eva Roben, who is the co-coordinator of Divest Harvard, said that the top 200 publicly traded fossil fuel companies are largely responsible for global warming. She said she does not believe her university should be involved in “the biggest moral issue of the day.”
Harvard’s president and administration were initially averse to speaking with Divest Harvard about divestment, but after the group created a petition that collected signatures from students, faculty, alumni and staff and held a student referendum on the issue, the administration became more cooperative, Roben said.
The referendum found that 72 percent of student voters supported Divest Harvard. The group will hold discussions with the administration in early February.
Yona said that the Dartmouth group does not know which fossil fuel companies the College invests its endowment funds in.
“It’s virtually impossible for us to know because nobody discloses such information,” Yona said. “But it’s safe to say that from among the top 200 fossil fuel companies, Dartmouth invests in some.”
Director of media relations Justin Anderson said that it is difficult to pinpoint the exact companies because much of the endowment is invested by investment managers in co-mingled funds.
He said that Dartmouth does not need to divest to make a difference.
“We believe that the most effective way to make fossil fuel companies more environmentally accountable, while also acting in the best financial interest of the institution, is for Dartmouth to use its status as a shareholder to vote for ‘green’ shareholder resolutions,” he said.
These environmental resolutions may include calling for sustainability reporting as well as strategies that lower companies’ carbon emissions and boost clean energy efforts.
Mauhs-Pugh said that the top 200 companies have a lot of lobbying power in Washington, D.C. and that the Fossil Free movement would demonstrate to Congress that the companies are not supported by consumers.
The divestment movement might pressure President Barack Obama and Congress to take action on climate change, she said.Dartmouth’s Fossil Free movement will meet to organize on Tuesday.
The only way this “divestment movement” would ever have a noticeable effect is if a large chunk of the investing universe gets on board with divestment, then it will cause a quasi permanent drop in stock prices of oil companies, perhaps raising their cost of capital and thereby indirectly raising the cost of oil, thus encouraging investment in competing alternative energy. The problem with this argument is that university endowments are a tiny tiny speck within the investing universe, so even if they all sold, it would have virtually no impact on cost of capital for fossil fuel cost.
You also get into a slippery slope in defining fossil fuels: oil companies for sure, but then what about utilities, car manufacturers, companies that sell drilling equipment, etc. – pretty soon you are talking about half the economy.
So while the goals of this movement are certainly noble and on-target, the effort seems misguided here.
By Anon on Jan 25 | 10:28 am
So if the College divests from everything (a few) students find offensive…what could be left for the College to invest in?
By Teetotaler on Jan 25 | 11:05 am
If you can’t see this puff piece about global warming was orchestrated by Justin Anderson to distract campus from the outrageous injustice of allowing the most brutal hazing organization on campus, Alpha Phi Alpha, walk then I have a bridge to sell you!!!
Dartmouth Students aren’t that dumb. Good Move, Bad Pass Anderson.
By John 15 on Jan 25 | 12:07 pm
anon, you forget that (as saul alinsky says in rules for radicals) “the issue is not the issue.” surely a divestment campaign across universities will bring a group of young, highly educated people into greater awareness of issues of environmental degradation.
and teetotaler, it seems to me that we should find out whether or not it is only “a few” students who disagree with these investments before making such a claim. plus, the investments are hardly “offensive” – they’re helping to make our planet humanly inhabitable. they’re destructive and oppressive.
By DDivest supporter on Jan 25 | 1:47 pm
Maybe the “Fossil Free” crew can get the Nobel Prize Winning Al “Jazeera” Gore to come to harangue them with more lies. The word has gone out in the LEFT from Pope Obama, at his second installation, that now is the time to attack energy (because it makes everything work) and say that it’s a good idea to leave it in the ground because it will become more valuable and then when we need it it will be a good idea not to get it because it will do all of the “Bad” things it will do if we get it now. This proves that some Dartmouth students have NO COMPASSION or understanding for their fellow people.
By Anon on Jan 25 | 2:00 pm
This is the New Left doing the Old Left’s incredibly stupid bidding. None of these people knows anything about Earth’s temperature and climate history, if they did they would thank God that they are alive today because without warming they wouldn’t be…alive. They may as well be protesting their lives. So why don’t you go and do that? Protest for abortion…oh that’s right the Left already has large wings doing that and all of the people in this “Protest” already believe in lots of abortions. Just not theirs, one would guess.
By Robin on Jan 25 | 2:07 pm
No, Dartmouth students most certainly are not dumb, and the hazing business is nasty, but UTTERLY beside the point of this “puff piece,” which is, by the way, anything but puff. I am incredibly thankful there are Dartmouth students who have the insight to recognize the single most critical issue of our time, one that is poised to affect every one of us on earth. Whether divestment of such institutions alone can curb climate change pollution is not the point either. At the very least, these students are drawing attention to the issue, and SOMEONE has got to take the lead here, and stop dodging, denying, and making excuses. Thank you, students!
By msinthehills on Jan 25 | 2:30 pm
I am a ‘95. I commend Leehi and Annie Laurie for getting the fossil fuel divestment movement started at Dartmouth. I can assure you there will be a large alumni contingent supporting you as you become a part of this nationwide movement. We’ve got your back.
Regarding the initial comment, don’t forget the first place that Mandela went upon gaining his freedom: California. He wanted to thank those who started the divestment movement in this country — which grew to 155 colleges and universities — that eventually broke Apartheid’s back.
For the climate crisis deniers and skeptics out there, find a quiet place in Baker library and read what started this movement…
http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/global-warmings-terrifying-new-math-20120719
By Ryan Nally on Jan 25 | 4:57 pm
“it seems to me that we should find out whether or not it is only “a few” students who disagree with these investments before making such a claim.”
Experience tells me this isn’t going to be a widespread movement on Dartmouth’s campus, DDivest supporter. I was here when Students Stand With Staff (which may still be around, they used to surface every few quarters to remind us they still existed in some form) defined flash in the pan by failing to win over the student body with their arguments—right before Occupy Dartmouth redefined it. Most Dartmouth students, even if they dislike the idea of fossil fuels, are going to see it as a necessary evil—they know their cars wouldn’t run without them, for instance.
It’s no stretch to say that this won’t be a major force. I’d call it the odds-on bet.
“they’re helping to make our planet humanly inhabitable. they’re destructive and oppressive.”
I really wouldn’t want to live in a world without fossil fuel, where perhaps the biggest form of mass transit would be the transcontinental railroad (which could only run via logging, seeing as how no train could use coal). If enabling upward social mobility for hundreds of millions through cheaper energy is “destructive and oppressive,” I’d really hate to see what a righteous cause could be.
By Teetotaler on Jan 25 | 5:05 pm
Anon you’re right about the slippery slope, the word choice of “companies that contribute to global warming” was poor – of course almost all companies contribute to global warming. The divestment campaign is specifically focused on oil companies.
The campaign also realises that it may or may not have a significant effect on the economy. The aim is for oil companies to be seen the way South African companies were during apartheid – as pariahs, as an immoral investment.
By Morgan Curtis on Jan 25 | 8:03 pm
If these sanctimonious students want to make a real difference, they should shut off their dorm heaters, which are run off steam from Dartmouth’s fossil fuel-burning power plant.
Or they could offer to pay more tuition to finance solar panel installations on campus.
But instead they would rather steal from the scholarships of future students by watering down the endowment with less profitable investments, based on a partisan agenda.
By Anon on Jan 26 | 4:24 am
While this cause is certainly commendable, why don’t these students focus their efforts on getting the College to reduce its own dependence on fossil fuel on campus? The Dartmouth power plant that provdes most of the College’s heat and electricty runs on No. 6 fuel oil. It would be nice to see the College become a leader in sustainability not just by shifting around investments but by actually demonstrating what a green institution looks like.
By Anonymous on Jan 26 | 12:06 pm
This isn’t a puff piece. It’s a buffoon piece. The market is everyone. The market always works…for everyone. One forced outcome from the top is disaster…everytime, everywhere. Understanding is the toughest thing to obtain because at all costs, people in power want those who aren’t in power to be useful idiots while they take power and control of their pitiful lives. Supposedly intelligent Ivy League students exposed as stupid once again.
By Bobo on Jan 26 | 4:30 pm