SUBSCRIBE TO OUR FREE NEWSLETTER
Daily news & progressive opinion—funded by the people, not the corporations—delivered straight to your inbox.
5
#000000
#FFFFFF
5
#000000
#FFFFFF
Next Phase for the Fossil Fuel Divestment Movement? Escalation
The question is simple but profound: Whose side are you on?
Feb 18, 2015
This spring, our college administrators face a choice. They will have to pick a side.
It is a choice that has been a long time coming. Ever since the fossil fuel divestment movement ignited across campuses internationally two years ago, our university leaders have been bending over backwards to accommodate the contorted logic of an extractive economy.
"Until our so-called 'leaders' join us in this effort... we will disregard business-as-usual just as business-as-usual has disregarded us."
Whether they are trustees who ask Harvard students to "thank BP," or presidents who believe that turning off light bulbs can help solve climate change, administrators have revealed themselves to be out of touch with reality. Presumably in the fantasy world of college boardrooms, the fossil fuel industry neither poisons hometowns nor receives $88 billion in corporate welfare a year. Yet back on planet Earth, students know that university endowments gamble away our futures with investments that undermine everything higher education stands for. At this crucial juncture in history, to value critical thinking and academic credibility is to value climate justice.
That is why this spring, we will ask our administrators, "Whose side are you on?"
The choice is stark enough to break through the cognitive dissonance preventing our leaders from acting. By fighting for divestment, students have proven that we will no longer be held hostage by an industry that insists on digging us deeper into its oil wells under the pretense of necessity. There is nothing necessary about tar sands. There is nothing necessary about investments which threaten the future generations that endowments are invested for.
We must ask of our administrators "whose side are you on" because they have yet to side with us, their students. The fossil fuel industry, by contrast, has already made clear where it stands: with the 1% of Wall Street profiteers and oil barons, with outdated infrastructure and fossilized ideas, with extraction and exploitation. Our administrators' choice, then, is simple.
It is the choice between the future we must achieve and the future we must avoid. Fossil fuel investments, whose value is predicated on climate catastrophe, are more than tacit endorsements of a rogue industry. They are the funds which front the cost of extreme energy's expansion. They are a bet on a business model that is not only morally bankrupt, but also existentially unsound. Divestment places us on the right side of history, and of physics.
We ask that our colleges pick a side because they have run out of excuses. The tide of divestment victories from 2014 continues to rise in the new months of 2015, demonstrating the possibility--and potential--of shedding tainted and inflated stocks. With Cambridge Associates, the largest endowment consultant in the world, facilitating pathways to divestment for campuses, the movement's momentum is undeniable. Our administrators need only make the right choice.
We will make sure that they do. Investments that support an unconscionable status quo are themselves unconscionable. As students build a more imaginative future, we ask that our leaders join us. Until then, we will disregard business-as-usual just as business-as-usual has disregarded us. This marks the beginning of the next phase of the fossil fuel divestment movement. We vow to march forward and will refuse to back down.
This statement was co-written by Miles Goodrich and other members of the 'The Escalation Strategy Working Group' - a subcommittee of the national Divestment Student Network - and signed by representatives from groups at the following colleges and universities:
Bowdoin Climate Action, Bowdoin College, Maine
Divest Harvard, Harvard University, Massachusetts
Divest Tulane, Tulane University, Louisiana
Fossil Free CU, University of Colorado-Boulder, Colorado
Fossil Free Reed, Reed College, Oregon
Fossil Free UC, University of California, Berkeley
Swarthmore Mountain Justice, Swarthmore College, Pennsylvania
UMass Fossil Free Campaign, University of Massachusetts-Amherst, Massachusetts
An Urgent Message From Our Co-Founder
Dear Common Dreams reader, It’s been nearly 30 years since I co-founded Common Dreams with my late wife, Lina Newhouser. We had the radical notion that journalism should serve the public good, not corporate profits. It was clear to us from the outset what it would take to build such a project. No paid advertisements. No corporate sponsors. No millionaire publisher telling us what to think or do. Many people said we wouldn't last a year, but we proved those doubters wrong. Together with a tremendous team of journalists and dedicated staff, we built an independent media outlet free from the constraints of profits and corporate control. Our mission has always been simple: To inform. To inspire. To ignite change for the common good. Building Common Dreams was not easy. Our survival was never guaranteed. When you take on the most powerful forces—Wall Street greed, fossil fuel industry destruction, Big Tech lobbyists, and uber-rich oligarchs who have spent billions upon billions rigging the economy and democracy in their favor—the only bulwark you have is supporters who believe in your work. But here’s the urgent message from me today. It's never been this bad out there. And it's never been this hard to keep us going. At the very moment Common Dreams is most needed, the threats we face are intensifying. We need your support now more than ever. We don't accept corporate advertising and never will. We don't have a paywall because we don't think people should be blocked from critical news based on their ability to pay. Everything we do is funded by the donations of readers like you. When everyone does the little they can afford, we are strong. But if that support retreats or dries up, so do we. Will you donate now to make sure Common Dreams not only survives but thrives? —Craig Brown, Co-founder |
Our work is licensed under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). Feel free to republish and share widely.
Divestment Student Network
The Divestment Student Network is an organizing hub for student-led organizations focused on fighting for global climate justice by demanding their respective institutions divest all financial holdings from the fossil fuels industry. Follow them on Twitter: @StudentsDivest
This spring, our college administrators face a choice. They will have to pick a side.
It is a choice that has been a long time coming. Ever since the fossil fuel divestment movement ignited across campuses internationally two years ago, our university leaders have been bending over backwards to accommodate the contorted logic of an extractive economy.
"Until our so-called 'leaders' join us in this effort... we will disregard business-as-usual just as business-as-usual has disregarded us."
Whether they are trustees who ask Harvard students to "thank BP," or presidents who believe that turning off light bulbs can help solve climate change, administrators have revealed themselves to be out of touch with reality. Presumably in the fantasy world of college boardrooms, the fossil fuel industry neither poisons hometowns nor receives $88 billion in corporate welfare a year. Yet back on planet Earth, students know that university endowments gamble away our futures with investments that undermine everything higher education stands for. At this crucial juncture in history, to value critical thinking and academic credibility is to value climate justice.
That is why this spring, we will ask our administrators, "Whose side are you on?"
The choice is stark enough to break through the cognitive dissonance preventing our leaders from acting. By fighting for divestment, students have proven that we will no longer be held hostage by an industry that insists on digging us deeper into its oil wells under the pretense of necessity. There is nothing necessary about tar sands. There is nothing necessary about investments which threaten the future generations that endowments are invested for.
We must ask of our administrators "whose side are you on" because they have yet to side with us, their students. The fossil fuel industry, by contrast, has already made clear where it stands: with the 1% of Wall Street profiteers and oil barons, with outdated infrastructure and fossilized ideas, with extraction and exploitation. Our administrators' choice, then, is simple.
It is the choice between the future we must achieve and the future we must avoid. Fossil fuel investments, whose value is predicated on climate catastrophe, are more than tacit endorsements of a rogue industry. They are the funds which front the cost of extreme energy's expansion. They are a bet on a business model that is not only morally bankrupt, but also existentially unsound. Divestment places us on the right side of history, and of physics.
We ask that our colleges pick a side because they have run out of excuses. The tide of divestment victories from 2014 continues to rise in the new months of 2015, demonstrating the possibility--and potential--of shedding tainted and inflated stocks. With Cambridge Associates, the largest endowment consultant in the world, facilitating pathways to divestment for campuses, the movement's momentum is undeniable. Our administrators need only make the right choice.
We will make sure that they do. Investments that support an unconscionable status quo are themselves unconscionable. As students build a more imaginative future, we ask that our leaders join us. Until then, we will disregard business-as-usual just as business-as-usual has disregarded us. This marks the beginning of the next phase of the fossil fuel divestment movement. We vow to march forward and will refuse to back down.
This statement was co-written by Miles Goodrich and other members of the 'The Escalation Strategy Working Group' - a subcommittee of the national Divestment Student Network - and signed by representatives from groups at the following colleges and universities:
Bowdoin Climate Action, Bowdoin College, Maine
Divest Harvard, Harvard University, Massachusetts
Divest Tulane, Tulane University, Louisiana
Fossil Free CU, University of Colorado-Boulder, Colorado
Fossil Free Reed, Reed College, Oregon
Fossil Free UC, University of California, Berkeley
Swarthmore Mountain Justice, Swarthmore College, Pennsylvania
UMass Fossil Free Campaign, University of Massachusetts-Amherst, Massachusetts
Divestment Student Network
The Divestment Student Network is an organizing hub for student-led organizations focused on fighting for global climate justice by demanding their respective institutions divest all financial holdings from the fossil fuels industry. Follow them on Twitter: @StudentsDivest
This spring, our college administrators face a choice. They will have to pick a side.
It is a choice that has been a long time coming. Ever since the fossil fuel divestment movement ignited across campuses internationally two years ago, our university leaders have been bending over backwards to accommodate the contorted logic of an extractive economy.
"Until our so-called 'leaders' join us in this effort... we will disregard business-as-usual just as business-as-usual has disregarded us."
Whether they are trustees who ask Harvard students to "thank BP," or presidents who believe that turning off light bulbs can help solve climate change, administrators have revealed themselves to be out of touch with reality. Presumably in the fantasy world of college boardrooms, the fossil fuel industry neither poisons hometowns nor receives $88 billion in corporate welfare a year. Yet back on planet Earth, students know that university endowments gamble away our futures with investments that undermine everything higher education stands for. At this crucial juncture in history, to value critical thinking and academic credibility is to value climate justice.
That is why this spring, we will ask our administrators, "Whose side are you on?"
The choice is stark enough to break through the cognitive dissonance preventing our leaders from acting. By fighting for divestment, students have proven that we will no longer be held hostage by an industry that insists on digging us deeper into its oil wells under the pretense of necessity. There is nothing necessary about tar sands. There is nothing necessary about investments which threaten the future generations that endowments are invested for.
We must ask of our administrators "whose side are you on" because they have yet to side with us, their students. The fossil fuel industry, by contrast, has already made clear where it stands: with the 1% of Wall Street profiteers and oil barons, with outdated infrastructure and fossilized ideas, with extraction and exploitation. Our administrators' choice, then, is simple.
It is the choice between the future we must achieve and the future we must avoid. Fossil fuel investments, whose value is predicated on climate catastrophe, are more than tacit endorsements of a rogue industry. They are the funds which front the cost of extreme energy's expansion. They are a bet on a business model that is not only morally bankrupt, but also existentially unsound. Divestment places us on the right side of history, and of physics.
We ask that our colleges pick a side because they have run out of excuses. The tide of divestment victories from 2014 continues to rise in the new months of 2015, demonstrating the possibility--and potential--of shedding tainted and inflated stocks. With Cambridge Associates, the largest endowment consultant in the world, facilitating pathways to divestment for campuses, the movement's momentum is undeniable. Our administrators need only make the right choice.
We will make sure that they do. Investments that support an unconscionable status quo are themselves unconscionable. As students build a more imaginative future, we ask that our leaders join us. Until then, we will disregard business-as-usual just as business-as-usual has disregarded us. This marks the beginning of the next phase of the fossil fuel divestment movement. We vow to march forward and will refuse to back down.
This statement was co-written by Miles Goodrich and other members of the 'The Escalation Strategy Working Group' - a subcommittee of the national Divestment Student Network - and signed by representatives from groups at the following colleges and universities:
Bowdoin Climate Action, Bowdoin College, Maine
Divest Harvard, Harvard University, Massachusetts
Divest Tulane, Tulane University, Louisiana
Fossil Free CU, University of Colorado-Boulder, Colorado
Fossil Free Reed, Reed College, Oregon
Fossil Free UC, University of California, Berkeley
Swarthmore Mountain Justice, Swarthmore College, Pennsylvania
UMass Fossil Free Campaign, University of Massachusetts-Amherst, Massachusetts
We've had enough. The 1% own and operate the corporate media. They are doing everything they can to defend the status quo, squash dissent and protect the wealthy and the powerful. The Common Dreams media model is different. We cover the news that matters to the 99%. Our mission? To inform. To inspire. To ignite change for the common good. How? Nonprofit. Independent. Reader-supported. Free to read. Free to republish. Free to share. With no advertising. No paywalls. No selling of your data. Thousands of small donations fund our newsroom and allow us to continue publishing. Can you chip in? We can't do it without you. Thank you.