{"id":5946,"date":"2013-10-08T11:40:10","date_gmt":"2013-10-08T15:40:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/?p=5946"},"modified":"2013-10-08T11:42:28","modified_gmt":"2013-10-08T15:42:28","slug":"divestment-is-about-undermining-the-political-power-of-the-fossil-fuel-industry-tim-dechristopher","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/2013\/10\/divestment-is-about-undermining-the-political-power-of-the-fossil-fuel-industry-tim-dechristopher.html","title":{"rendered":"Divestment is about undermining the political power of the fossil fuel industry –Tim DeChristopher"},"content":{"rendered":"

Answering\r\n\r\nHarvard President Drew Faust’s excuses<\/a>,\r\n

\r\nTim DeChristopher, who\r\n\r\nwent to jail for directly opposing gas and oil drilling<\/a>\r\nand is now\r\n\r\na student at Harvard Divinity School<\/a>,\r\n

\r\nTo seriously suggest that any research will solve the climate crisis\r\nwhile we continue to allow the fossil fuel industry to maintain a\r\nstranglehold on our democracy is profoundly naive.\r\n<\/blockquote>\r\n

\r\nWen Stephenson\r\nwrote for the Nation 4 October 2013,\r\n\r\nTim DeChristopher: There Is No \u2018Neutral’ in the Climate Fight<\/a>,\r\nincluding DeChristopher’s statement:\r\n

\r\n

\r\n\r\n<\/a>\r\nDrew Faust seeks a position of neutrality in a struggle where the\r\npowerful only ask that people like her remain neutral. She says that\r\nHarvard’s endowment shouldn’t take a political position, and yet it\r\ninvests in an industry that spends countless millions on corrupting\r\nour political system. In a world of corporate personhood, if she\r\ndoesn’t want that money to be political, she should put it under her\r\nmattress. She has clearly forgotten the words of Paolo Freire:\r\n“Washing one’s hands of the conflict between the powerful and\r\npowerless means to side with the powerful, not to remain\r\nneutral.”\r\nOr as Howard Zinn put succinctly, “You can’t\r\nbe neutral on a moving train.”\r\n<\/p>\r\n

\r\nShe touts all the great research on climate change that is done at\r\nHarvard, but she ignores the fact that the fossil fuel industry\r\nactively works to suppress or distort every one of those efforts. To\r\nseriously suggest that any research will solve the climate crisis\r\nwhile we continue to allow the fossil fuel industry to maintain a\r\n

\r\n“Washing one’s hands of the conflict between the powerful and\r\npowerless means to side with the powerful, not to remain\r\nneutral.”\r\n—Paolo Freire\r\n<\/blockquote>\r\nstranglehold on our democracy is profoundly naive. Faust never\r\nadmits whether or not she agrees with the\r\n\r\nbasic science of the carbon budget<\/a>,\r\nwhich is the foundation of the understanding that the\r\ncurrent reserves of the fossil fuel industry cannot be burned\r\nwithout condemning us to an unlivable future. If she accepts the\r\nscience, she should explain how her plan of cooperation will\r\nconvince the industry to leave those assets in the ground.\r\n<\/p>\r\n

\r\nFaust’s claim that the university should not divest while it\r\ncontinues to consume fossil fuels obfuscates the fact that\r\ndivestment is about undermining the political power of the fossil\r\nfuel industry. Energy is a market driven not by consumers but by\r\npolitical influence, yet Faust alludes to the worn out old argument\r\nthat the consumers of fossil fuels don’t have a right to object to\r\nthe crimes against humanity committed by an industry that uses\r\npolitical leverage to prevent alternatives. As a historian of the\r\nCivil War, surely Faust knows that the exact same argument was made\r\nto defend slavery, an energy source that was once every bit as vital\r\nto our economy as fossil fuels are today.\r\n<\/p>\r\n

\r\nThe students’ call for divestment was a call for help by the young\r\npeople who will reap the consequences of the climate crisis. The\r\nindustry committed to ruining our future simply asked Faust to stay\r\nout of it. There is no way for someone in a position of influence to\r\nnot take a side in such a situation. That’s why leadership is no\r\nplace for a coward. By turning her back on those calling for help,\r\nFaust absolutely took a side. I strongly suspect that time will show\r\nthat she chose the wrong side of history. When our generation writes\r\nDrew Faust into the history books, being not as bad as Larry Summers\r\nwill not suffice as a position of honor. Harvard needs leaders\r\nbetter able to see beyond their own time, and the students who will\r\ncontinue to push for divestment are a great example.\r\n<\/p>\r\n—Tim DeChristopher\r\n<\/blockquote>\r\n

\r\nAs Tim DeChristopher\r\n\r\nsaid when he was sentenced<\/a>,\r\n

\r\n

\r\nSince fossil fuels are a limited resources, whoever controls access\r\n\r\n<\/a>\r\nto that resource in the beginning gets to set all the terms. They\r\nset the terms for their workers, for the local communities, and\r\napparently even for the regulatory agencies. A renewable energy\r\neconomy is a threat to that model. Since no one can control access\r\nto the sun or the wind, the wealth is more likely to flow to whoever\r\ndoes the work of harnessing that energy, and therefore to create a\r\nmore distributed economic system, which leads to a more distributed\r\npolitical system. It threatens the profits of the handful of\r\ncorporations for whom the current system works, but our question is\r\nwhich segment of the public are you tasked with protecting. I am\r\nhere today because I have chosen to protect the people locked out of\r\nthe system over the profits of the corporations running the system.\r\nI say this not because I want your mercy, but because I want you to\r\njoin me.\r\n<\/p>\r\n<\/blockquote>\r\n

\r\n\r\n<\/a>\r\nJoin him, Harvard.\r\nJoin him,\r\n\r\nVSU<\/a>.\r\n<\/p>\r\n

\r\n -jsq\r\n<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Answering Harvard President Drew Faust’s excuses, Tim DeChristopher, who went to jail for directly opposing gas and oil drilling and is now a student at Harvard Divinity School, To seriously suggest that any research will solve the climate crisis while we continue to allow the fossil fuel industry to maintain a stranglehold on our democracy […]","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":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[216,15,41,6124,559,22,23,73,24,134,36],"tags":[7028,8753,1306,1003,1308,8705,8701,1300,8718,8702,12,7,562,8782,8712,8713,8731,8714,7027,6,8743,8716],"class_list":["post-5946","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-coal","category-education","category-health-care","category-natural-gas-2","category-oil","category-politics","category-renewable-energy","category-safety","category-solar","category-vsu","category-wind","tag-bidder-70","tag-coal","tag-derek-bok","tag-divestment","tag-drew-faust","tag-education","tag-georgia","tag-harvard","tag-health-care","tag-lake","tag-lowndes-area-knowledge-exchange","tag-lowndes-county","tag-natural-gas","tag-oil","tag-politics","tag-renewable-energy","tag-safety","tag-solar","tag-tim-dechristopher","tag-valdosta","tag-vsu","tag-wind"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p585fK-1xU","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5946","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=5946"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5946\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5948,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5946\/revisions\/5948"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5946"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5946"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5946"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}