{"id":7560,"date":"2014-02-02T07:51:21","date_gmt":"2014-02-02T12:51:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/?p=7560"},"modified":"2014-02-02T07:55:15","modified_gmt":"2014-02-02T12:55:15","slug":"maybe-vsu-should-join-this-band-of-fossil-free-foundations","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/2014\/02\/maybe-vsu-should-join-this-band-of-fossil-free-foundations.html","title":{"rendered":"Maybe VSU should join this band of Fossil-Free Foundations"},"content":{"rendered":"

\r\nMaybe that’s what the VSU Foundation wants to tell SAVE\r\n\r\nwhen they dine Monday<\/a>:\r\nVSU gets it (even if Harvard doesn’t) that fossil fuels are a bad investment and solar is where the profits, students, and investors are.\r\n

\r\nDiane Cardwell \r\nwrote for DealBook 30 January 2014,\r\n\r\nFoundations Band Together to Get Rid of Fossil-Fuel Investments<\/a>,\r\n

\r\n

\r\n\r\n<\/a>\r\nSeventeen foundations controlling nearly $1.8 billion in investments\r\nhave united to commit to pulling their money out of companies that\r\ndo business in fossil fuels, the group announced on Thursday.\r\n<\/p>\r\n

\r\nThe move is a victory for a developing divestiture campaign that has\r\nfound success largely among small colleges and environmentally\r\nconscious cities, but has not yet won over the wealthiest\r\ninstitutions like Harvard, Brown and Swarthmore.\r\n<\/p>\r\n

\r\nBut the participation of the foundations, including the Russell\r\nFamily Foundation, the Educational Foundation of America and the\r\nJohn Merck Fund, is the largest commitment to the effort, and stems\r\nin part from a push among philanthropies to bring their investing in\r\nline with their missions.\r\n<\/p>\r\n

\r\n“At a minimum, our grants should not be undercut by our\r\ninvestments,” said Ellen Dorsey, executive director of the\r\nWallace Global Fund, which is practically divested of fossil fuels\r\nalready and is coordinating the effort among foundations. “If\r\nyou owned fossil fuels in your investment portfolio, it became\r\nincreasingly clear to foundations that they own climate change, and\r\nthey’re potentially profiting from those investments,” at the\r\nsame time as they make grants to fight the issue.\r\n<\/p>\r\n<\/blockquote>\r\n

\r\nVSU can continue echoing\r\n\r\nHarvard’s feeble excuse:<\/a>\r\n

\r\n

\r\n\r\n<\/a>\r\n“Universities own a very small fraction of the market\r\ncapitalization of fossil fuel companies,” Drew Faust,\r\nHarvard’s president wrote in a statement in October of the\r\nuniversity’s decision not to sell. “If we and others were to\r\nsell our shares, those shares would no doubt find other willing\r\nbuyers. Divestment is likely to have negligible financial impact on\r\nthe affected companies. And such a strategy would diminish the\r\ninfluence or voice we might have with this industry.”\r\n<\/p>\r\n<\/blockquote>\r\n

\r\n\r\n<\/a>\r\nEven after\r\n\r\nHarvard SEAS has invented an organic battery<\/a> that,\r\nif it pans out and goes commercial in a few years,\r\ncould accelerate the already rocketing growth of solar power,\r\nwhich is\r\nadding about 65% more power every year,\r\nlike compound interest<\/a>.\r\nAnd solar stocks are\r\n\r\nalso rocketing upwards<\/a>, much faster than fossil fuel stocks.\r\n

\r\nOr VSU could set an example, getting in before Harvard:\r\n

\r\n

\r\n\r\n<\/a>\r\nIn addition to the foundations, 22 cities, two counties, 20\r\nreligious organizations, nine colleges and universities and six\r\nother institutions had signed up to rid themselves of investments in\r\nfossil fuel companies, frequently defined as the top 200 coal-, oil-\r\nand gas-producing companies identified in a report from the Carbon\r\nTracker Initiative based in London.\r\n<\/p>\r\n<\/blockquote>\r\n

\r\n\r\n<\/a>\r\nWill VSU Foundation\r\n\r\ntake this opportunity<\/a> to put VSU forward\r\nas an institution students want to attend and where investors want to invest,\r\na place more socially responsible and investment-savvy than Harvard?\r\n

\r\n -jsq\r\n<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"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, […]","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":[216,14,15,6124,559,134],"tags":[8753,8704,8705,7417,7421,8701,639,1300,7418,8702,12,7,562,8782,7419,7416,7420,6,8743],"class_list":["post-7560","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-coal","category-economy","category-education","category-natural-gas-2","category-oil","category-vsu","tag-coal","tag-economy","tag-education","tag-educational-foundation-of-america","tag-eric-e-schmidt","tag-georgia","tag-google","tag-harvard","tag-john-merck-fund","tag-lake","tag-lowndes-area-knowledge-exchange","tag-lowndes-county","tag-natural-gas","tag-oil","tag-park-foundation","tag-russell-family-foundation","tag-schmidt-family-foundation","tag-valdosta","tag-vsu"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p585fK-1XW","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7560","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=7560"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7560\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7564,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7560\/revisions\/7564"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7560"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7560"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7560"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}