Tag Archives: Oil

Massive vote for SAVE’s fossil fuel divestment by VSU Student Government Association



When

at first they didn’t succeed
, SAVE tried again and won.
Next: VSU Foundation again. -jsq


RESOLUTION #14432


Support of S.AV.E. Fossil Free Divestment Campaign

Date: March 4, 2014

Authored by:

Senator Candicee Childs, Freshman Senator, Public Relations Chairman & Student Representative of

Faculty Senate Environmental Issues Committee

Senator Tamera Dunn, Graduate Senator



Be it enacted by the Senate of Valdosta State University (VSU) here
assembled, that:

WHEREAS, the Students Against Violating the Environment (S.A.V.E.)
organization has presented

a divestment campaign
for the VSU
Foundation to the Student Government Association

in October 2013
,
resulting in the request for additional clarity and information to
be gathered regarding their campaign, and

WHEREAS, the SAVE organization has obtained support from

the Faculty Senate Environmental Issues Committee

for
their divestment campaign
for

the VSU Foundation
in November 2013, and

WHEREAS, the SAVE organization has also obtained unanimous support Continue reading

Humans are the cause, and it’s time for people to become the solution –Danielle Jordan for SAVE



LTE in the VSU newspaper, The Spectator, today. -jsq

To the Editor,

Climate change is the defining issue of our time.

Ninety-seven percent of scientists agree
that
humans are the cause. S.A.V.E.
believes that it’s time for people to become the solution.
Globally,
we are feeling the impacts of record-setting temperatures, most
notably in the extreme weather patterns and rising sea levels.


Recent

chemical (W.VA)
and

coal ash spills (N.C.)
add to the urgency
of moving beyond fossil fuel. Yet here on our campus there’s a
remarkable disconnect between the classroom and the board room.
Shockingly, the VSU Board of Trustees includes science deniers,
oblivious to the threat of climate change—and to the academic
integrity of this institution of higher learning.



Recently,

the Board dismissed
S.A.V.E.’s

request that VSU rid its portfolio
of fossil fuel holdings.
Board Chairman,
Wayne Edwards,

a financial analyst
, cast doubt on



the study that accompanied our request
.
But we ask you, who knows more about climate, a team of
2,000 scientists from 154 countries who have compiled data from more
than 9,000 studies, or a stock broker? Our point is that serious
decisions at this institution are being taken by people who lack the
proper credentials.

Chairman Edwards

dismissed socially responsible investing as
Continue reading

Maybe VSU should join this band of Fossil-Free Foundations

Maybe that’s what the VSU Foundation wants to tell SAVE

when they dine Monday
:
VSU gets it (even if Harvard doesn’t) that fossil fuels are a bad investment and solar is where the profits, students, and investors are.

Diane Cardwell
wrote for DealBook 30 January 2014,

Foundations Band Together to Get Rid of Fossil-Fuel Investments
,



Seventeen foundations controlling nearly $1.8 billion in investments
have united to commit to pulling their money out of companies that
do business in fossil fuels, the group announced on Thursday.

The move is a victory for a developing divestiture campaign that has
found success largely among small colleges and environmentally
conscious cities, but has not yet won over the wealthiest
institutions like Harvard, Brown and Swarthmore.

But the participation of the foundations, including the Russell
Family Foundation, the Educational Foundation of America and the
John Merck Fund, is the largest commitment to the effort, and stems
in part from a push among philanthropies to bring their investing in
line with their missions.

“At a minimum, our grants should not be undercut by our
investments,” Continue reading

SAVE to dine with VSU Foundation Monday



The VSU Foundation has invited SAVE to dinner Monday.
No agenda is known, but the Foundation gets four attendees
and SAVE gets two.

Foundation attendees are to be:

The two attendees from

Students Against Violating the Environment (S.A.V.E.)
,
each apparently twice as heavyweight as a Foundation Trustee,
will be: Continue reading

America’s Dangerous Pipelines –Center for Biological Diversity


7,978 fatalities by in 2013 – 4,199 by 2001 = 3,779,
which is more than the 2,977 killed by the hijackers on 9/11.
If the fossil fuel industry was a foreign country, we would have invaded it by now.
Why should we let that industry invade our lands for their profit?
Let’s not permit

a fossil fuel disaster
here.

Center for Biological Diversity
wrote on YouTube 31 July 2013

America’s Dangerous Pipelines
: Continue reading

Actually, green solar power is winning

An article that dismisses without investigation the fastest
growing industry in the world, solar power, after solar has become

cheaper than any other energy source
, is not a serious article.



Richard Smith wrote for Truthout 9 January 2014,

Green Capitalism: The God That Failed
.
Sure,
there are lots of good points in there (such as we need a carbon tax,
but it’s not enough), but given that

only 90 companies account for 2/3 of GHG emissions

saying we can’t change that without crashing the world’s economy is
like saying we can’t deal with horse manure in cities in 1900 without
crashing the world’s economy, and

people did say things like that back then
.

Most of the world’s oil and gas is used to produce power,
so once we

convert to solar and wind
,
we’ll have plenty of remaining petroleum for other uses
such as lubrication.



Saying in 2014 that solar and wind can’t power the world is like
saying in 1994 that Continue reading

Buried under nine feet of manure: 19th century horse predictions



There is a big difference between the 19th century horse excrement
crisis and the current 21st century energy crisis,
similar as they may sound.
One was real.
The other is manufactured by the modern equivalent of stagecoach vendors.

Stephen Davies wrote for The Freeman 1 September 2004,

The Great Horse-Manure Crisis of 1894
,

In 1898 the first international urban-planning conference convened
in New York. It was abandoned after three days, instead of the
scheduled ten, because none of the delegates could see any solution
to the growing crisis posed by urban horses and their output.



The problem did indeed seem intractable. The larger and richer that
cities became, the more horses they needed to function. The more
horses, the more manure. Writing in the Times of London in 1894, one
writer estimated that in 50 years every street in London would be
buried under nine feet of manure. Moreover, all these horses had to
be stabled, which used up ever-larger areas of increasingly valuable
land. And as the number of horses grew, ever-more land had to be
devoted to producing hay to feed them (rather than producing food
for people), and this had to be brought into cities and
distributed—by horse-drawn vehicles. It seemed that urban
civilization was doomed.

Continue reading

More solar jobs already than coal, or oil and gas extraction

Want jobs?
Invest in solar power.



There are more people in the

U.S. employed in the solar energy

marketplace than mining coal. The banal argument that transitioning
to a clean energy economy will cost us jobs is simply false. Solar
is growing more than 10 times faster than the American economy.

Solar already employs more than coal, and that gap is widening. In
2012, solar added 14,000 new jobs, up 36 percent from 2010 and the
industry will add another 20,000 jobs this year. The fossil fuels
industry cut 4,000 jobs last year. So when it comes to employing
Americans, solar is winning.

That 119,000 jobs in the solar industry is also more than
the 106,400 “production and nonsupervisory employees” in the oil and
gas extraction industry, and gaining rapidly Continue reading

VSU Environmental Issues Committee backs SAVE fossil fuel divestment


EIC
went first, and
attached to

the agenda
for the VSU faculty senate meeting

that moved to back SAVE and condemn the position of the Board of Trustees

this statement. -jsq

Attachment D

Links and notes from Environmental issues committee


Dl

Link to Physical Plant work order form, where the user can tailor the request to a lighting issue:

https://tma.valdosta.edu/webtma/GenerateRequest.aspx?key=8fMN5Hy6FywdBGVfahdUsPDaD%2bsth%2bE6fXG%2brkvftJ0%3d

D2



Hello,
At today’s EIC meeting, the committee voted on , and passed, the following statement that I am sending onto the
Executive Committee of the Faculty Senate.

“The EIC moved to agree to the following statement as a committee and to communicate it to the Executive Committee
of the Faculty Senate for consideration:

The EIC as a standing committee of the Faculty Senate supports the
efforts of S.A.V.E. (Students Against Violating the Environment) to
encourage the VSU Foundation to consider divesting from fossil fuel
extraction-based investments.”

If you have Continue reading