by Tracy C. Miller
Environmental activism among college students has recently
been channeled into a movement to pressure college endowments to divest
their holdings of stock in companies that extract fossil fuels.
Beginning at Swarthmore College, the fossil fuel divestment movement
(FFDM) has already had an impact on some colleges and universities,
including Stanford, Georgetown, and Oxford. Many activists hope the FFDM
will help persuade governments to restrict the extraction and use of
fossil fuels.
Whatever the economic consequences for colleges and
universities, widespread divestment, particularly if it leads to
restrictions on fossil fuels, will do a great deal of harm without much
benefit to the climate or the environment.
Proponents of divestment argue that keeping global
temperatures from rising more than 2 degrees Celsius requires that total
emissions of carbon dioxide not exceed 565 gigatons. Fossil fuel
companies hold enough coal, oil, and natural gas reserves to emit 2,765
gigatons, according to a 2012 article in the Rolling Stone written by Bill McKibben, a leader in the FFDM and founder of the climate activist group 350.org.
An important goal of the movement is that those who hold coal, oil and
gas reserves keep most of them in the ground, rather than selling them
to be burned, so that less CO2 is emitted into the
atmosphere. This goal could be achieved if governments tax or restrict
the extraction or burning of fossil fuels.
The FFDM is being promoted as a grassroots movement among college
students who care about the environment. However, its organizational and
intellectual framework comes from professional environmental activists
and environmental organizations that train college students and put them
forward as the face of the movement. Many students encountered the
ideas behind the FFDM in sustainability classes sponsored by their
colleges. Professors at two colleges gave students college credit for
working on fossil fuel divestment campaigns.
...Since the FFDM’s ultimate goal is to drastically reduce the use of
fossil fuels, student activists would do well to consider what impact
eliminating fossil fuels would have on their own lifestyles. Students
are highly dependent on technology that uses electricity, 67% of which
is generated from fossil fuels.
Are these students ready to lose two thirds of their mobile phone use,
social media time, radio, television and computer time, not to mention
lighting and air conditioning and laundry machine use, unless they pay
much more for electricity generated from alternative energy sources?
...Students should also consider the likely economic consequences of policy that restricts CO2.
Proponents of divestment claim to be promoting social justice, but how
many of them have heard or considered how inexpensive fossil fuel powers
economic development that benefits the poor? How many understand the
extent to which their high standards of living are the result of
production powered by fossil fuels and that without government
subsidies, the cost of alternative energy sources would be out of reach
for lower income people even in wealthy countries?
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