Brown Divest Coal is asking our university to divest from the top five coal mining companies and the top 10 coal-burning utilities in the United States. By remaining invested in coal, Brown betrays its moral principles and undermines its commitment to students’ futures.
According to the International Energy Agency, we need “a major wave of new and clean investments” by 2017 to avoid disastrous climate change. Unless we act now, climate change will displace at least 25 million people and will put 30 percent of all plant and animal species on a path towards extinction. A university committed to social justice should not profit from an industry that threatens to make the climate unlivable for future generations, an industry that is the single largest source of carbon dioxide emissions worldwide.
In her guest column Monday, President Christina Paxson expressed concerns about the “practical difficulties of monitoring which companies should be excluded from the portfolio” (“Paxson: Next steps in the consideration of divestment,” April 15). But the Advisory Committee on Corporate Responsibility in Investment Policies has established clear benchmarks for divestment: any U.S. mining company that produces more than 50 million tons of coal annually and any utility that generates more than 15,000 GWh of electricity annually from coal. Coal mining companies and utilities publish these numbers in their annual 10-K business filings.
Paxson also wonders whether “encouraging clean coal technologies might be a better approach until there exist viable alternatives to fossil fuels.” But clean coal technology, also known as carbon capture and sequestration, isn’t a viable option. There is not a single commercial-scale carbon capture and sequestration plant operating anywhere in the world. The same cannot be said of wind, solar and geothermal. Renewables accounted for half of all new electricity generating capacity installed in the United States in 2012. There is no need to wait for an unproven technology like clean coal when we already have solutions to the urgent problem of climate change.
In the columns, both Paxson and Oliver Hudson ’14 note that divestment from these fifteen companies might compromise Brown’s finances (“Hudson: A lump of coal isn’t so bad,” March 19). Tom Steyer, a prominent hedge fund manager, recently wrote a letter to the Corporation stating that “a coal-free endowment is a good investment policy.” Furthermore, the University’s administration has indicated that our investments in coal are worth less than 0.1 percent of the total value of our endowment. Unlike Hudson, we have total faith that Brown’s investment advisers are capable of re-investing this money effectively to ensure that we have the funds necessary for research, salaries and financial aid.
Brown has been a leader on climate change before, and we join Paxson in celebrating its sustainability efforts and climate research. But in order to combat climate change with the urgency this research demands, Brown can no longer support the coal industry. Through divestment, Brown can use its influence as an intellectual leader to galvanize the political will necessary to confront climate change.
Divestment has been a successful tactic in the past. In the 1980s, students across the country demanded their schools divest from companies supporting the apartheid regime in South Africa. Nelson Mandela cited pressure from divestment efforts as a critical catalyst in the eventual downfall of the regime. Like the fight against apartheid, combatting climate change is a moral imperative with a robust national movement demanding immediate action. Brown Divest Coal is part of a fossil fuel divestment movement that has reached almost 400 schools and cities across the country, and four schools and the city of Seattle have already divested.
After a full school year of events and discussion, Brown’s campus has spoken. More than 2,600 people have signed our petition, including hundreds of alums, faculty and staff. The Undergraduate Council of Students voted to support coal divestment in March, and ACCRIP followed suit two weeks ago. In the past, the Corporation has always abided by ACCRIP’s recommendations on divestment.
It is easy to feel disempowered as an individual, a voter or a school when facing an issue as immense and terrifying as climate change. But it is one thing to feel disempowered and another entirely to reject action in favor of apathy. Brown now faces a choice. We can continue to delay, displaying the same lack of political will that has hindered meaningful progress on climate change from Copenhagen to Capitol Hill. Or we can take a stand, aligning our investments with our values and with the incontrovertible evidence of rapid climate change coming from our own science faculty. This is not a difficult choice. Brown: Stand by your principles, stand by your students, stand by the future of this planet. It’s time for the Corporation to vote yes on divestment in May.
Brown Divest Coal is a student group calling on Brown to take a stance against the coal industry.
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