{"id":12997,"date":"2015-04-27T19:00:25","date_gmt":"2015-04-27T23:00:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/?p=12997"},"modified":"2015-04-27T19:03:45","modified_gmt":"2015-04-27T23:03:45","slug":"divest-harvard-is-winning-and-we-all-will-win-sun-wind-and-water-power","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/2015\/04\/divest-harvard-is-winning-and-we-all-will-win-sun-wind-and-water-power.html","title":{"rendered":"Divest Harvard is winning, and we all will win sun, wind, and water power"},"content":{"rendered":"

\r\nChanging the world is hard and takes courage, but that’s why we will win. Bill Sargent had given up on global projects and turned\r\nto smaller local problems where it seemed there was a greater change of making a real difference.\r\nHe wrote for Harvard Heat Week 27 April 2015,\r\nHeat Week: Teaching An Old Dog New Tricks<\/a>,\r\n

\r\n

\r\n\r\n<\/a>\r\nBut then I met Divest Harvard. Here was a group of bright, eager,\r\nsleep-deprived young undergraduates and grad students — free\r\nof such skepticism and willing to take on both Big Oil and the\r\nrichest University in the world in one fell swoop.\r\n<\/p>\r\n<\/blockquote>\r\n

\r\nHe listed a number of ways Divest Harvard is winning because<\/em>\r\nthey chose the biggest targets under adverse conditions. For example:\r\n\r\n\r\n

\r\n

\r\nDrew Gilpin Faust, Harvard’s President, has looked especially\r\nuncomfortable. As an undergraduate, she skipped her midterms as an\r\nundergraduate in order to march in Selma, Alabama. Now, she’s been\r\nforced to admit that Harvard already divested itself of tobacco and\r\ncompanies that had been doing business in South Africa. She is\r\ntrying to make the argument that Harvard has a responsibility to\r\nearn the highest return on its endowment, even though the University\r\nhas lost $21 million dollars on it’s fossil fuel stocks in just the\r\nthirty months.\r\n<\/p>\r\n<\/blockquote>\r\n

\r\nHarvard alumnus President John F. Kennedy,\r\n\r\n12 September 1962 at Rice University<\/a>:\r\n

\r\n

\r\n\r\n<\/a>\r\nWilliam Bradford, speaking in 1630 of the founding of the Plymouth Bay Colony, said that all great and honorable actions are accompanied with great difficulties, and both must be enterprised and overcome with answerable courage….\r\n

\r\nWe choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things,\r\nnot because they are easy, but because they are hard, because that\r\ngoal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and\r\nskills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept,\r\none we are unwilling to postpone, and one which we intend to win,\r\nand the others, too.\r\n<\/p>\r\n<\/blockquote>\r\n

\r\nEnding the the fossil fuel industry’s century-long domination of our economy and political process may seem hard,\r\nbut that goal has already served to organize the skills and energies\r\nof people who did not know they even had them.\r\n

\r\nAnd if activists can\r\n\r\nturn the most corrupt state into the fastest growing U.S. solar market<\/a>,\r\nwe can collectively convert the U.S. to sun, wind, and water power.\r\n

\r\nEven Harvard will eventually recognize\r\nfixing climate change is profitable<\/a>.\r\n

\r\nYes, even the VSU Foundation will eventually listen to\r\n\r\nthe consultation that has already happened with faculty, staff, students, and administration<\/a>.\r\nLike Harvard, Valdosta State University divest from fossil fuels.\r\nEven if they wait until their alumni demand they stop losing money. \r\n

\r\nWe will win, and\r\n\r\nin less than a decade<\/a>.\r\nFirst we need to stop the trail of destruction and hazards\r\nthe dirty pipeline snakes\r\nwant to plow through Georgia from the west (Spectra Energy and FPL’s\r\n\r\nSabal Trail fracked methane pipeline<\/a>) and the east (Kinder Morgan’s\r\n\r\nPalmetto Project fracked oil products pipeline<\/a>).\r\n

\r\nThere are great and honorable actions to do.\r\nCourage is required, but we shall overcome.\r\n

\r\n -jsq\r\n<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Changing the world is hard and takes courage, but that’s why we will win. Bill Sargent had given up on global projects and turned to smaller local problems where it seemed there was a greater change of making a real difference. He wrote for Harvard Heat Week 27 April 2015, Heat Week: Teaching An Old […]","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[47,216,15,6124,559,24,55,36],"tags":[8453,8719,8753,1003,8454,8705,8701,1300,8455,8451,8702,12,7,8452,562,8782,6597,8714,6966,6,8727,8716],"class_list":["post-12997","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-climate-change","category-coal","category-education","category-natural-gas-2","category-oil","category-solar","category-water","category-wind","tag-bob-sargent","tag-climate-change","tag-coal","tag-divestment","tag-drew-gilpin-faust","tag-education","tag-georgia","tag-harvard","tag-harvard-heat-week","tag-john-f-kennedy","tag-lake","tag-lowndes-area-knowledge-exchange","tag-lowndes-county","tag-moon","tag-natural-gas","tag-oil","tag-sabal-trail-transmission","tag-solar","tag-spectra-energy","tag-valdosta","tag-water","tag-wind"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p585fK-3nD","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12997","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12997"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12997\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13001,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12997\/revisions\/13001"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12997"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12997"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12997"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}