At a couple hundred universities, the Divest Coal movement has inspired students. The movement wants universities to divest investments in the 15 “of the largest, dirtiest coal companies in the (United States).” According to We Are Power Shift, an umbrella Divest Coal organization, universities must divest because of the harm to coal workers’ health and damage to the environment.
The hazards of coal cannot be denied. According to We Are Power Shift, mining and burning coal cause 280,000 severe cases of asthma annually, $100 billion in annual health care costs and dangerous emission levels of greenhouse gases. Coal clearly has drawbacks. But some bad does not mean all bad.
In fact, divestment is dangerous. Divestment would likely harm universities including Brown, harm thousands of workers in the coal industry and harm millions of people dependent on energy produced from coal.
First, divestment would likely harm Brown and its students. Divestment would require the University to sell any holdings in the “Filthy 15.” But the Brown investment team made investments in these companies believing they would grow the endowment. Thus, divestment means asking Brown to make investment decisions it thinks are not in the best interests of the University. Strangely, the Brown Divest Coal Campaign claims on its website that divestment will not come at any cost to the endowment. This assumes Brown does not aim to make profitable investments. The Brown investment staff does not deserve that insult.
Clearly divestment comes at a cost, though perhaps a small cost relative to the size of the endowment. Brown’s $2.5 billion endowment is the financial backbone of the classes, professors, facilities and programs each of us values.
Any loss to the endowment is a blow to the University’s capacity to fund a great Brown education, now and in the future. Is this cost to the endowment worth it? Are you willing to have the University spend a little less on financial aid in order to divest from coal? Are you willing to have the University not hire that next great professor a few years in the future in order to divest from coal? Divest Coal would have greater credibility if it acknowledged that divestment comes at the expense of improvements in college education.
Accordingly, Divest Coal would take a more ethical stance if its supporters chose to divest from coal in their own lives and set an example for others to do the same — instead of burdening the rest of the student body with divestment’s costs.
Besides harming universities, divestment would harm thousands of workers in the coal industry. There are about 174,000 jobs in the coal industry in the United States. Brown Divest Coal aims to explain away divestment’s expected termination of coal jobs by assuring website readers that “in West Virginia, only 6 percent of the workforce is directly employed in coal mining.” Is this a comfort to the West Virginia miners?
The biggest casualty of divestment would be the millions reliant on coal for energy. Coal supplies 38.1 percent of the world’s energy. In other words, thanks to coal, schools, factories, businesses and other organizations can educate, provide jobs and improve lives. Try to imagine the world without energy from coal. Only the diehard ideologue willfully ignoring the facts could argue that sacrificing nearly 40 percent of the world’s energy needs in the name of “going green” is a good trade. Considering the economic benefits coal has brought to millions, it’s rational to see coal, at least for now, as good and not evil.
Many see Divest Coal as standing up for the “little guy” against those “greedy” coal executives (“the Man”). In fact, Divest Coal stands in the way of the little guy. Coal’s low cost brings the most benefit to poorer communities. Out of the 404 coal plants with capacities over 100 megawatts in the United States, 80.4 percent are located in counties having a lower per-person income than the national average. The World Bank, an international organization dedicated to reducing poverty, has stated that “(climate change) will be achieved by energy transitions by the largest consumers of coal, not by foreclosing on energy options that mean access to basic electricity for the world’s poorest people.” Given what mass divestment would mean to poorer communities, it’s hard to see the Divest Coal movement as humanitarian.
We all want energy that is safe, environmentally friendly and cheap. Someday energy technology will likely develop that is both cheaper and safer than coal. But that day has not yet come. If that technology were viable today, coal would already be obsolete.
For now, until viable advances in energy technology are made, the best option for much of our energy needs is coal, even with its negatives. I admire Divest Coal supporters for their willingness to stand up for what they believe in. But I think if they examine what they believe, they will determine the costs of divestment outweigh the benefits.
Oliver Hudson ’14 can be contacted at oliver_hudson@brown.edu.
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