By Akhil Mathew
On April 11th, 2013, Divest Harvard held its first big rally outside Massachusetts Hall, which houses the Harvard administration's offices. The rally featured speakers Hannah Borowsky (a sophomore and Divest Harvard member), Reverend Fred Small (of the First Parish in Cambridge), Tara Raghuveer (Undergraduate Council President), Professor David Keith (of the applied physics department), and Ben Franta (Divest Harvard member).
I can’t even express how I feel right now.
In a few minutes, I will post updates from the Divest Harvard rally today–it was an extraordinary experiences that changed my life and humbled me.
Then I read Bill McKibben’s new piece in Rolling Stone, “The Fossil Fuel Resistance.” Of course, the article is incredible, moving, and inspiring. He lays out our fight, what we’re up against, and the unprecedented momentum that the climate movement has gained in the past few months. We up against colossal force, but our collective moral authority will ultimately win.
The article also feature “the New Green Heroes.” I am honored beyond words to be one of those people. I am the “Divestment Nerd.” To be listed among the ranks of these activists is surreal.
My passion is nature, and my inspiration comes from my home, my family, my friends, and every single person that I interact with every day. I remember when I spoke at assembly in high school for the first time when I was a Sophomore. I was petrified to announce that I was starting an environmental group. But it was through environmental activism that I found my voice. And this is the power of First Here, Then Everywhere. From a farm in rural Maine to Rolling Stone. Anyone (and I mean anyone) can have their voice heard.
Youth climate leaders rightly argue that it is they - not current-day politicians, executives, and administrators – who will have to live with the consequences of today's decisions when it comes to fossil fuel use. As these young people mobilize in hundreds of fossil fuel divestment campaigns we are excited to release a new tool designed to help them make their case powerfully, creatively, and rigorously.
On February 17th, I was part of history. 50,000 people from around North America traveled to Washington DC for the Forward on Climate rally--the largest climate rally in US history. We protested the Keystone XL pipeline and the expansion of tar sands oil.
Tar sands exploitation was recently identified as one of 14 "carbon bombs." A mixture of clay, sand, water, and bitumen (a hydrocarbon that can be processed into crude oil), tar sands is extracted from under Canada’s Boreal Forest.
The next issue of Green American magazine will be hitting mailboxes any day now, and the theme is the movement to divest from fossil fuels. As part of our research, we talked to a number of different leaders in the divestment movement. Here are some things we learned:
It’s been three months since Bill McKibben called on students to divest their university endowments from fossil fuels companies.
Green America, a non-profit that works to “harness economic power…to create a socially just and environmentally sustainable society,” recently released a feature on “Why Divestment?“ They interviewed leaders within the fossil fuel divestment movement who specialize in different areas. I was honored to represent the student perspective. Stephen Mulkey (President of Unity College), Reverend Lennox Yearwood (founder of Hip Hop Caucus), Mike McGinn (Mayor of Seattle), and Lauren Ressler (from Responsible Endowments Coalition) are also featured.
Check out the interviews here!
http://www.greenamerica.org/pubs/greenamerican/articles/JanFeb2013/Climate-Divestment-Interviews.cfm
I wrote this op-ed for The Harvard Crimson with Better Future Project founder, Craig Altemose!
Last weekend, up to 50,000 people rallied in Washington, D.C. to protest the creation of the Keystone XL pipeline and the expansion of the tar sands industry. This was the largest climate rally in history, and for good reason. People are finally realizing that society cannot continue to extract new forms of fossil fuels if they care at all about future generations on this planet.
Unfortunately, former Harvard president and current professor Larry Summers didn’t get the memo. In a recent Washington Post opinion piece titled “The growth agenda we need,” Summers lays out a detailed four-point plan to kickstart the American economy—a plan that includes approving Keystone XL. Summers is right in saying that it is time to transform the North American energy sector. But Summers’ plan is far from transformative. Instead, it merely reinforces the dominance of fossil fuels, an energy source that is warming our planet to unprecedented levels.
Summers claims that the U.S. must approve Keystone XL in order to keep tar sands from being exported to Asia, which has far fewer sound environmental regulations. This argument is flawed for two main reasons.
First, it makes the assumption that the morality of our nation is relative to the behavior of other nations. This relativistic viewpoint ignores the simple facts. Burning Canadian tar sands will accelerate the dangerous effects of fossil fuels and climate change, regardless of who does it. Such environmental negligence would threaten 100 million lives by 2030. The World Bank has stated that “adaptation may not be possible” to the world we are currently on track to create. It is hardly an excuse to say that we can commit deadly sins simply because the sins of others might be worse.
The second flaw in Summers’ argument is his assumption that tar sands will continue to be extracted regardless of our behavior. Tar sands can only be transported out of the heart of Canada by three routes: south, through the Keystone XL, west, through the Canadian Rockies and First Nations lands, and east, through New England. And opposition against tar sands expansion has already shown the potential to be an unstoppable force.
Thousands of people have put their bodies on the line to stop expansion to the south. Many have been arrested at the Tar Sands Blockade in Texas. Last fall, 12,000 rallied and 1,253 were arrested in Washington, D.C. to stop Keystone XL, in the largest showing of civil disobedience in 30 years. First Nations peoples of Western Canada have been steadfast in their opposition, and their enhanced legal status gives them a virtual veto over the construction of pipelines on their ancestral lands. Here in New England, Better Future Project and 350.org are working in coalition with other local and national groups to prevent ExxonMobil from shifting the direction of an oil-bearing, 60 year-old pipeline to allow it to export the heavier and more leakage-prone tar sands without the necessary presidential permit. Just two weeks ago, our groups convened over 1,500 people in Portland, Maine as the first potent display of grassroots opposition to this eastern pipeline.
We need a transformation of our energy system, as Professor Summers notes. But this transition must break away from increasing fossil fuel consumption. To some it may seem like the forces of the tar sands industry are too powerful to be stopped. But there are more people fighting for a clean energy future than ever before, and our numbers are growing every day. Our society has reached a point where we can begin to understand a world destroyed by carbon fuels, and we know that this is not a path we should begin to go down.
Rachel Carson said, “We stand now where two roads diverge. But unlike the roads in Robert Frost’s familiar poem, they are not equally fair. The road we have long been traveling is deceptively easy, a smooth superhighway on which we progress with great speed, but at its end lies disaster. The other fork of the road, the one less traveled by, offers our last, our only chance to reach a destination that assures the preservation of the earth.”
The two paths are clear before us. Which one will you choose?
Chloe S. Maxmin ’15, a Crimson editorial writer and co-coordinator of Divest Harvard, is a social studies concentrator in Mather House. Craig S. Altemose is a 2010 alumnus of Harvard Law School and Harvard Kennedy School and the Executive Director of Better Future Project.
By Hannah Borowsky
Last night, as I searched my desk for an envelope that wasn’t crinkly, I couldn’t have possibly imagined how exciting today would be for me, Divest Harvard, and our entire movement. I needed a not-so-crinkly envelope because I had a very important letter to deliver - a letter to Mr. Al Gore.
This evening, the former vice president came to Harvard to deliver the inaugural Paul R.
I was very honored to co-author this article with Bill McKibben for the Scholars Strategy Network. SSN is directed by Harvard Professor Theda Skocpol and “ brings together many of America’s leading scholars to address pressing public challenges at the national, state, and local levels.” See the article below!
THE PROMISE OF THE “FOSSIL FREE” MOVEMENT TO DEMAND DIVESTMENT FROM CARBON ENERGY CORPORATIONS
by Bill McKibben, Middlebury College, with Chloe Maxmin, Harvard College student
On the morning of January 23, 2013, a student group called “GU Fossil Free” arrived in the office of Georgetown University President John DeGioia to deliver a letter urging the university to divest from all investments in fossil-fuel companies over the next five years. Similar scenes are playing out across the United States, as students on more than 234 campuses so far are participating in “Go Fossil Free” campaigns encouraged by the environmental activist group 350.org. In addition to colleges and universities, churches and urban pension funds are being pushed to withdraw investments from fossil-fuel companies that make big profits from coal, oil, and gas reserves, whose use to generate energy dumps carbon emissions into the global environment with the threat of great harm to current and future generations.
As activists and scholars, we share an interest not only in organizing this movement, but also in reflecting on its strategy and potential at a juncture of U.S. political stasis.
Breaking the Logjam
The fossil fuel divestment movement is intended to break the logjam at a moment of tragic paradox. Global warming is accelerating, yet the U.S. political process remains tied in knots in the face of pressures from industrial interests invested in the status quo.
The crisis is plain to see. The year 2012 was the hottest in American history. An epic drought destroyed the Midwestern grain harvest and caused world food prices to increase by ten percent, Arctic summer melting broke every record and led climatologist James Hansen to describe a “planetary emergency.” Then an unusual autumn mega-storm, Hurricane Sandy, flooded the New York subway system and revealed the fragility of power and transportation in one of the globe’s great urban centers. Add to this massive floods in Pakistan, Australia, Thailand, Central America, and the Philippines, droughts in Africa and parts of Asia, and widespread destruction of fragile coral reefs in the oceans. These recent deleterious effects from climate change have occurred after just 0.8 degrees Celsius warming – but we are headed for much worse. A recent World Bank report concluded that, without immediate remedial steps, the planet is on track for 4 degrees Celsius of warming.
As the window closes for action before an irreversible climate crisis grips modern civilization, the U.S. government is deadlocked. Republicans are opposed to regulating carbon energy sources and often suggest that scientific warnings are false. In his first campaign, Democrat Barack Obama promised to “slow the rise of the oceans” and end “the tyranny of oil.” But the United States made no solid commitments at the late 2009 Copenhagen world climate conference, and legislation to limit carbon emissions died in Congress the next year. During the 2012 presidential campaign, climate change was not mentioned by either candidate. Researchers tell us that what “elites with megaphones” have to say in public debates can influence how citizens think about the threat of global warming and what to do about it, but most U.S. political leaders are silent or are engaged in spreading false messages.
Political Pressures from the Fossil Fuel Industry
The top 200 publicly traded oil and coal companies that own the majority of fossil fuel reserves are planning to burn five times more carbon than the planet can safely endure. Their prospective profits are astronomical, and these industries have mobilized to protect their stake.
Compared to renewable energy companies, fossil fuel industry groups spend twenty times more on lobbying and enjoy six times more in federal subsidies. The fossil fuel interests went all out to block carbon controls in Congress, and they have joined with ideological groups to push a massive disinformation campaign questioning the validity of climate science findings about the growing threat of global warming. The Koch Brothers and other wealthy donors have given tens to hundreds of millions of dollars to shadowy organizations like Donors Trust and Donors Capital Fund, which channel money to entities like the Heartland Institute – a right-wing think tank that promotes the notion that global warming is a hoax pushed by greedy scientists.
Why the Divestment Strategy Holds Promise
There are four key reasons why Fossil Free campaigns are a good way to get around and pressure the deadlocked U.S. governmental system:
Success for Fossil Free campaigns is far from assured, because many institutional leaders do not want to tamper with investments that generate good dividends. Fossil fuel companies and the American Petroleum Institute are highlighting the big profits they earn for investors and investment funds. But student groups and other bottom-up activists are free to speak up and take a longer view. The arguments they are marshaling will make it increasingly uncomfortable for key institutions to collaborate silently in fossil fuel exploitation. Divestment campaigns helped to end racism in South Africa, and they can also help to speed steps against global warming – at a time when other channels for reform in the United States are too often blocked or slow-moving.
Tomorrow--Friday, February 1st, 2013--Divest Harvard will have our first meeting with the administration. Only three students can attend the meeting, but we hope to have dozens of others standing outside to show that students care about this issue and support the University as they begin the discussion about divestment.
Join us for a peaceful gathering tomorrow at 2:15 pm in lobby of the Harvard University Barker Center (12 Quincy St., Cambridge, MA)!
