by Bob Ciesielski
A week after Superstorm Sandy and a day after the presidential election, Bill McKibben took to the road for a national “Do the Math” tour concerning the urgency of global climate change. His organization, 350.org, has launched a nationwide program to have pension funds and university endowments divest themselves from fossil fuel stocks.
This effort is modeled on the divestiture program used to combat apartheid in South Africa. Organizers of 350.org have been in contact with national Sierra Club’s Beyond Coal Campaign, which has been using divestiture to urge universities to rid themselves of support for coal and its industry’s stock portfolios. National Sierra Club Executive Director Michael Brune joined Bill McKibben in several cities on the “Do the Math” tour.
By early December, college students on dozens of campuses were demanding that university endowment funds rid themselves of coal, oil and gas stocks. Unity College in Maine has already voted to get out of fossil fuel stocks. Hampshire College in Massachusetts has adopted a broad investment policy to transition from the investments.
Efforts are ongoing at New York University, Swarthmore College in Pennsylvania, Lewis & Clark University in Oregon, Cornell University, and Harvard.
Go to www.350.org for more information on how you can become involved; another web site, gofossilfree.org, is specifically designed for students.
Part of McKibben’s “Do the Math” campaign is to simply show that fossil fuel companies control—and intend to exploit—fossil fuel reserves more than five times greater than the maximum amount calculated to permanently shift the world’s climate.
As McKibben notes, the fossil fuel industry has no intention of sacrificing its economic and political power, regardless of consequences to the Earth and its people. This summer ExxonMobil’s CEO Rex Tillerson finally acknowledged that climate change exists. His suggestion? Move agricultural growing zones worldwide to accommodate the increase in the greenhouse gases caused by his industry.
Bob Ciesielski chairs the Chapter Energy Committee.