The issue of universities divesting from fossil fuels has become a major issue on college campuses around the country, with students urging their administrations to stop investing in fossil fuel companies that contribute to global warming. However, there is debate over whether divestment is feasible or a productive way to combat climate change.
A panel-led discussion explored the complexity involved with divestment and what it would mean for Brandeis University to divest from fossil fuels. As part of a series of discussions on sustainability at Brandeis, the panelists covered issues of climate change awareness, the recent Paris Agreement that resulted in 196 countries agreeing to limit the increase in global temperatures to below 2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial temperatures, the purpose of divestment and the challenges the Brandeis divestment campaign faces.
The discussion, which is part of an series on sustainability at Brandeis, was led by four panelists: Senior Lecturer at the Brandeis International Business School John Ballantine, Jr., Senior Lecturer the Heller School for Social Policy and Management Eric Olson, Aneil Tripathy, a Brandeis graduate student studying Anthropology and Michael Abrams ’15, a staff legal researcher at the Schuster Institute for Investigative Journalism.
The panelists provided context on the current state of climate change and climate change awareness.
“Climate change is real,” said panelist John Ballantine, Jr. He recognized that the Paris COP21 Agreement is a significant step towards addressing climate change on the part of the global community. However, the agreement was just that—an agreement—and does not bind countries to their word, Ballantine said. He also recognized that despite the Paris Agreement and scientific evidence, not everyone believes in human-caused climate change. Seventy percent of Americans believe humans are responsible for climate change, according to a Yale University poll.
Panelist Eric Olson equates the low belief in climate change to a “deliberate effort to discombobulate Americans.” Olson cited a recent Forbes article that headlined “2015 Was Not Even Close To Hottest Year On Record” as evidence of deliberate discombobulation. He contrasted this article with The New York Times headline that claimed the opposite, saying 2015 was “The Hottest Year on Record.“ The evidence in the Forbes article intentionally misled readers, said Olson, by using temperatures from a specific slice of the atmosphere rather than from the surface, where temperatures are usually recorded. Olson also cited an article by Brulle which found that nearly $1 billion were spent to “maintain public confusion” on the topic of climate change.
On the subject of divestment, Olson reminded the Brandeis community that “divestment is not aiming at harming companies directly,” by declining to purchase their stock. If you sell off holdings in a company, someone else will buy them, Olson explained. Instead, divestment constitutes a political statement from a university “trying to hold onto some moral high ground,” he said.
Panelist Aneil Tripathy used a quote from Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis as evidence for why he believes Brandeis University should pursue divestment from fossil fuels. Tripathy quoted Brandeis stating there is “no such thing, to my mind, as an innocent stockholder. [The stockholder] accepts the benefits of the system, it is his business and his obligation to see that those who represent him carry out a policy which is consistent with public welfare.”
Tripathy suggest that Justice Brandeis might have found “Brandeis [University] as responsible for holding shares in these companies.”
“We have to really reflect on what kind of an institution we want Brandeis to be,” said Tripathy. “The university must ultimately be guided by its social justice mission,” as stated in the Final Report and Recommendations from Brandeis’ Exploratory Committee on Fossil Fuel Divestment, which recommended divestment last spring.
Determining whether an investment is “egregiously bad” is a complicated issue. Ballantine cited Exxon as an example: “People can say [Exxon] is egregiously bad because they funded the activities to create the confusion [about the facts of climate change] but they also funded activities, a lot of activities, at MIT.” Ballantine adds though that “we aren’t even having that conversation.” When asked by an audience member, “What divestment means given Brandeis’ investment strategy,” Ballantine replied, “We don’t know … we don’t have the information, it’s not reported out.” Ballantine says, “The question is, is there actually a dialogue going on at the investment committee level?”
Students involved with Brandeis Climate Justice have been active in protesting for divestment over the past few years. They have led demonstrations, spoken at Town Halls with administrations and during the last Board of Trustees meeting in October, they held a protest urging the trustees to act.
