Drilled

Source: Drilled

…Universities Need to Break Their Addiction to Fossil Funding

 Going back to the 1950s when Standard Oil first started to heavily invest in universities, oil companies have always thought about the social and political conditions necessary to preserve their wealth and power, and supported university research that does just that.

In recent years, university students have started to push their campuses to refuse this money, and last week Princeton University became the first to actually do so…or at least take the first step toward doing so. The university announced that it would no longer accept gifts or grants from 90 fossil fuel companies, and that its $37.7 billion endowment will also eliminate all holdings in those companies.

That list includes ExxonMobil, but… for now anyway…not BP, which continues to fund the university’s Carbon Mitigation Initiative. Still, it’s a massive step forward, and a huge win for the divestment movement.

Earlier this year, I had the opportunity to speak with divestment organizers at five different Ivy League universities who came together to file a legal complaint attempting to compel their campuses to divest from fossil fuels. The Fossil-Free Research campaign grew out of those efforts, and I had a chance to speak with those organizers as well, just as the initiative was getting off the ground. I’m bringing you those interviews now because when universities like Princeton and Harvard announce these big divestment decisions, they generally don’t credit the students that have been yelling at them for three years to do the right thing. These students spent countless hours researching and organizing, and applying constant pressure and it’s paying off. It’s also really interesting to see how folks like Dr. Geoffrey Supran and Dr. Ben Franta who started out campaigning for divestment as students have since devoted their careers to climate accountability, producing a lot of the research that this next generation of divestment organizers draw from. I guess two can play the university investment game, eh?