{"id":309,"date":"2012-11-24T13:46:39","date_gmt":"2012-11-24T18:46:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/2012\/11\/how-to-stop-climate-change-divest-from-fossil-fuel-companies.html"},"modified":"2018-11-01T21:35:26","modified_gmt":"2018-11-02T01:35:26","slug":"how-to-stop-climate-change-divest-from-fossil-fuel-companies","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/2012\/11\/how-to-stop-climate-change-divest-from-fossil-fuel-companies.html","title":{"rendered":"How to stop climate change: divest from fossil fuel companies"},"content":{"rendered":"

\r\nIn response to a very downbeat\r\n\r\ndiatribe by Bill McKibben in Rolling Stone on the occasion\r\nof the U.N.’s Rio+20 conference<\/a> being some sound and less fury accomplishing\r\nnot much about stopping climate change, \r\n[Bill McKibben, Rolling Stone, 19 July 2012, “Global Warming\u2019s Terrifying New Math: Three simple numbers that add up to global catastrophe \u2013 and that make clear who the real enemy is”<\/a>]<\/span>\r\n\r\n\r\n\"Chloe<\/a>\r\nHarvard student Chloe Maxmin\r\n\r\nfollowed up McKibben’s problem statement with a plan for what to do:<\/a>\r\ndivest from fossil fuel companies. [“In Honor of Kalamazoo: An Open Letter to Bill McKibben,” NextGenJournal, 25 July 2012, no longer online, referred to in a post the same day by Chloe Maxmin on First Here, Then Everywhere<\/a>.]<\/span>\r\n\r\nMaxmin didn’t just wish, either,\r\nshe joined up with McKibben’s 350.org and helped organize\r\nHarvard students to do something about it:\r\npersuade Harvard to divest its shares of fossil fuel companies.\r\nStudents at the University of Georgia, or at Valdosta State University,\r\nfor that matter, could do the same.\r\n<\/p>\r\n

\r\nAlli Welton wrote for 350.org 18 November 2012,\r\n\r\n72% of Harvard Students Vote to Divest from Fossil Fuels<\/a>,\r\n<\/p>\r\n

\r\n

\r\nLast Friday night, the Harvard College Undergraduate Council\r\nannounced that the student body had voted 72% in favor of Harvard\r\nUniversity divesting its $30.7 billion endowment from fossil fuels.\r\n<\/p>\r\n

\r\nMembers of the Harvard chapter of Students for a Just and Stable\r\nFuture have been campaigning since September to divest Harvard’s\r\nendowment from the top 200 publicly-traded fossil fuel corporations\r\nthat own the majority of the world’s oil, coal, and gas reserves.\r\n<\/p>\r\n<\/blockquote>\r\n

\r\nHarvard actually already has divested its shares of one fossil fuel company\r\ndue to public pressure.\r\n\r\n\r\nStephen M. Marks and Lauren A.E. Schuker wrote for the Crimson 4 April 2005,\r\n\r\nHarvard To Divest From PetroChina:\r\nDecisions comes after months of pressure due to company’s links to Sudan<\/a>\r\n<\/p>\r\n

\r\n

\r\nHarvard will sell its shares of PetroChina after months of pressure\r\nregarding PetroChina’s alleged ties to ongoing genocide in the\r\nDarfur region in Sudan, the University announced today….\r\n<\/p>\r\n

\r\nThe announcement coincided with a student demonstration this\r\nmorning, where students\u2014wearing black and carrying\r\nsigns\u2014rallied for Harvard to divest its holdings in\r\nPetroChina….\r\n<\/p>\r\n

\r\nUniversity President Lawrence H. Summers, who asked for the ACSR for\r\na recommendation on the issue, said in a press release that while\r\nHarvard does not usually divest, the circumstances surrounding\r\nPetroChina merit an exception.\r\n<\/p>\r\n

\r\n\u201cDivestment is not a step that Harvard takes lightly, but I\r\nbelieve there is a compelling case for action in these special\r\ncircumstances, in light of the terrible situation unfolding in\r\nDarfur and the leading role played by PetroChina’s parent company in\r\nthe Sudanese oil industry, which is so important to the Sudanese\r\nregime,\u201d Summers aid.\r\n<\/p>\r\n<\/blockquote>\r\n

\r\nYes, that Larry Summers, the architect of the 2009 global financial meltdown.\r\nEven Larry Summers thought divestment was appropriate in the case of PetroChina.\r\n<\/p>\r\n

\r\nSummers’ replacement after he was ejected by the faculty,\r\ncurrent Harvard President Drew Faust, still sounds the “circumstances”\r\nalarm, countered by an op-ed in the Crimson, the student newspaper, 14 November 2012,\r\n\r\nVote to Divest,<\/a>\r\n<\/p>\r\n

\r\n

\r\nAt the Undergraduate Council and Harvard Graduate Council General\r\nMeeting on October 21st, President Faust said that Harvard considers\r\ndivestment is considered: “Only in the most extreme of\r\ncircumstances.\u201d DARA, an independent, non-profit organization,\r\nrecently released a report sponsored by 20 governments that shows\r\nthat the human death toll from climate change could exceed 100\r\nmillion by 2030. Most of these deaths are the direct result of\r\nburning fossil fuels. It is hard to imagine a circumstance much more\r\nextreme. Moreover, climate change is an equity issue. Most of the\r\nadverse effects of climate change disproportionately impact\r\ndeveloping countries, while the majority of greenhouse gas emissions\r\nsince the industrial revolution have come from industrialized\r\nnations.\r\n<\/p>\r\n<\/blockquote>\r\n

\r\nSummers and Faust no doubt know of an even bigger case of divestment\r\nprompted by students,\r\nstarting as early as 1977, when then-president Derek Bok\r\n\r\nsounded the “circumstances” alarm:<\/a>\r\n<\/p>\r\n

\r\n

\r\nPresident Bok’s open letters, which called total divestiture\r\nunjustifiable and a threat to Harvard’s academic freedom and\r\nfinancial longevity, gave the Corporation the appearance of concern\r\nand served to further anesthetize student opposition.\r\n<\/p>\r\n<\/blockquote>\r\n

\r\nThat’s the same Derek Bok who was brought in as interim president\r\nafter Summers was ejected, until Faust was selected.\r\nBut it turned out there were special circumstances, as evidenced by\r\n\r\na former student, Gay W. Seidman ’78, getting elected in 1986 by petition\r\nto Harvard’s Board of Overseers on a pro-divestment platform.<\/a>\r\nThree years later, the pro-divestment movement got\r\n\r\nSouth African Archbishop Desmond M. Tutu elected in 1989 to the Board of Overseers.<\/a>\r\n<\/p>\r\n

\r\n\r\n\"Gay<\/a>\r\nBack in the late 1970s when the divestment movement started on campus\r\nat Harvard, who was reporting on it at and then president of the Crimson?\r\nThe\r\n\r\nsame Gay Seidman who later got elected to the Board of Overseers.<\/a>\r\n<\/p>\r\n

\r\n

\r\n\u201cI thought that [the anti-apartheid story] would be bigger\r\nearlier [than most],\u201d she explains. \u201cThis was really\r\ngoing to matter.\u201d\r\n<\/p>\r\n<\/blockquote>\r\n

\r\nCan Chloe Maxmin duplicate that feat?\r\nMaybe not the same way, since Harvard changed the rules to\r\nmake petition candidates harder to elect. So hard\r\n\r\neven after being elected president of Harvard Law Review in 1990,\r\nBarack Obama couldn’t get elected to the Board of Overseers in 1991.<\/a>\r\nYes, he was running on a pro-divestment platform.\r\nSo was my classmate Steven Ballmer ’77, now CEO of Microsoft;\r\neven he couldn’t get elected on a petition.\r\n<\/p>\r\n

\r\nHowever, the pro-divestment movement was successful in the end.\r\nAdam A. Sofen and Alan E. Wirzbicki wrote for the Crimson (unknown date),\r\n\r\nA CONFLICTED RELATIONSHIP:\r\nHarvard supported South Africa through\r\ninvestments, but partially divested under protest<\/a>.\r\nThey wrote\r\nthat Harvard actually adopted its first pro-divestment rules in\r\n1978 under president “unjustifiable” Bok, and,\r\n<\/p>\r\n

\r\n

\r\n\r\n\"End<\/a>\r\nBy 1985 these rules, which were reviewed periodically, called for\r\nthe University to use its proxy votes to urge companies operating in\r\nSouth Africa to \u201ctake active steps to oppose apartheid.\u201d\r\n<\/p>\r\n

\r\nIt also forbade investing in banks that made loans to the South\r\nAfrican government and companies that provided \u201csignificant\r\nquantities of an important good or service used in the direct\r\nenforcement of apartheid.\u201d The policy also promised a\r\ndivestment of stock in companies that refused to disclose the extent\r\nof their operations in South Africa.\r\n<\/p>\r\n<\/blockquote>\r\n

\r\nAs we’ve seen, pro-divestment activists didn’t stop there.\r\nAnd their work had something to do with the end of apartheid in South Africa\r\nin 1993.\r\nIt wasn’t just that Harvard was among the first of many universities\r\nto divest;\r\ntheir divestment influenced many other organizations and people.\r\nStudents can have the same effect on stopping fossil fuel companies\r\nfrom ruining the world through climate change.\r\nChloe Maxmin knows this history, as she wrote for 350.org:\r\n<\/p>\r\n

\r\n

\r\nChloe Maxmin, a co-coordinator for Divest Harvard, said that the\r\nelection results show unprecedented student voice around divestment:\r\n\u201cIn 1990, 52% of voting students supported complete divestment\r\nfrom apartheid South Africa. Today 72% of voting students are\r\nraising their voices for fossil divestment, telling Harvard to stop\r\ninvesting in companies that are threatening our future.\u201d\r\n<\/p>\r\n

\r\nDivest Harvard was the first student group in six years to\r\nsuccessfully qualify a referendum question for Harvard student\r\ngovernment elections, gaining hundreds of signatures beyond the 670\r\n(10% of the undergraduate student body) necessary for qualification.\r\nThe passage of the referendum makes fossil fuel divestment the\r\nofficial position of the Harvard College Undergraduate Council.\r\n<\/p>\r\n<\/blockquote>\r\n

\r\nCan’t get a petition candidate elected to the Board of Overseer?\r\nGet the student body to vote 72% on a petition referendum question.\r\nTry to ignore that, Overseers!\r\nAnd that’s not only more than the 52% apartheid pro-divestment vote\r\nin 1990, it’s way faster: three months September to November,\r\ncompared to thirteen years from 1977 to 1990.\r\n<\/p>\r\n

\r\n\r\n\"Divest<\/a>\r\nThere is a nationwide college divestment campaign,\r\n\r\nDivest for our future<\/a>,\r\nalready involving 24 campuses.\r\nThe University of Georgia can join that list.\r\nAnd that could start at one of UGA system’s big regional universities:\r\nthe Valdosta State University, with more students than\r\nmost of the colleges and universities already on the list.\r\n<\/p>\r\n

\r\nWho will stand up against the fossil fuel companies?\r\n<\/p>\r\n

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