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The Pernicious Influence of Big Oil on America’s Universities
https://newrepublic.com/article/158086/pernicious-influence-big-oil-americas-universities
Stanford’s divestment debate shows how effective fossil fuel companies have been at colonizing academia.
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While divestment campaigns often focus on ethics, removing investments from fossil fuel production isn’t just ethical: It’s necessary. In 2013, the International Energy Agency estimated that to limit global warming to two degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit), global investments in fossil fuels would need to decline by $5 trillion by 2035 (about $200 billion per year, on average). In its latest Assessment Report, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change also found that stopping climate destruction at that level would require fossil divestment of hundreds of billions of dollars per year.
Peer-reviewed research in top scientific journals further shows that to meet that two-degree goal—now codified in the Paris climate agreement—new fossil fuel development should cease (because even current reserves cannot all be used), and no more fossil-fueled power plants can be built unless they are retired before the end of their economically useful life (rendering them unattractive investments). A recent analysis in the top scientific journal Nature Energy found that to create an investment trajectory consistent with the Paris climate agreement, investors should increase the proportion of their energy investments in clean energy systems over time: At least half such investments should be in clean energy by 2025 and 80 percent by 2035.
In other words: To avoid climate catastrophe, investors must move away from fossil fuels over time. Divestment isn’t an optional step: It’s a necessary condition, ideology aside. The question facing all investors—universities, pension funds, individuals, and others—is not whether to divest but rather how to do so and how quickly.
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on May 28, when it came time for Stanford’s faculty senate to discuss divestment, faculty hesitated. When I went to watch the debate, I saw professor after professor at one of America’s richest universities first declare concern about climate change, then pivot to defend Big Oil, with many pointing to their receipt of industry funding. One professor suggested society needs oil to make hand sanitizer. To state the obvious: The vast majority of fossil fuels are not used for that purpose. When I marveled over the comment later to my adviser, science historian Robert Proctor, he said he recalled a similarly bizarre argument being made in the faculty senate in 2007 to justify continued acceptance of tobacco funding: One faculty member, according to Proctor, had said we needed the cigarette industry to make vaccines. Records of that debate also show professors’ fear that if the university rejected tobacco funding, people would start to question its receipt of oil money next.
“Funding from fossil fuels supports a lot of environmental and alternative energy research on campus,” geophysics professor Dustin Schroeder argued at the recent oil divestment meeting, as reported by The Stanford Daily. Yet fossil fuel spending on alternative energy research is comparatively minuscule: The industry spends 99 percent of its capital expenditures—over $100 billion per year—to explore for, develop, and acquire new fossil fuel reserves, despite the fact that current reserves are already more than enough to cause irreversible, catastrophic damage to life on Earth.
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Oil money runs deep at Stanford. The largest energy and climate research center on campus, the Global Climate & Energy Project, was co-founded by ExxonMobil and receives a majority of its funding from fossil fuel interests, who retain formal control over research portfolios. The university’s Precourt Institute for Energy is named after an oil and gas executive, and its Energy Modeling Forum is funded by the American Petroleum Institute, ExxonMobil, Chevron, BP, Schlumberger, and other fossil groups. The list goes on. These industry-funded centers, in turn, hire, provide work space for, and fund the professors and graduate students responsible for helping the world transition away from fossil fuels. If that sounds like a conflict of interest, it is.
With decisive action, times of crisis—converging crises even more so—can be turning points. Institutions whose mission statements often explicitly cite the well-being of all of society as an ultimate goal face a moral test. Trustees making the decision should consider their legacy. Researchers receiving company money should recognize the conflict of interest. And the rest of us should examine the ties between our nation’s universities and the industry propelling the world to ruin.