You’ve heard it before, but it bears, or rather needs, repetition: the world is dying and it is our fault. Climate change has already lead to the displacement of marginalised communities around the world (think Hurricane Katrina, think Vanuatu) and it is our fault. The only response of a just society in the face of such a catastrophic and hyperbole-inducing horror as global warming is to stop, reflect, and fight with everything it has to reverse the damage. Unfortunately, while some people have cottoned on to this, the leaders of our society have not. Lobbying governments to take climate change seriously is the focus of many environmental activists, and the most promising lobbying strategy globally is fossil fuel divestment.
Monday 18th May will see the culmination of two years’ work by the Oxford Fossil Fuel Divestment Campaign as the University Council will discuss whether or not to disinvest its £3.8 billion endowment from companies involved in the exploration, ownership or extraction of fossil fuels. If you have been following the campaign, you may know that this was supposed to be discussed two months ago, but the Council deferred the decision under the spotlight of international media. Oxford cannot afford to postpone again, for reasons of both reputation and responsibility, particularly when we now know that if we are to stay below the two degree target for warming, 80 per cent of coal has to remain in the ground.
The OUSU-affiliated Fossil Fuel Divestment Campaign has widespread support, including from 32 common rooms, over 100 academics and almost 800 alumni, who have pledged not to donate to the University unless they fully divest. Furthermore, over 65 Oxford alumni, including solar entrepreneur Jeremy Leggett and journalist George Monbiot, have promised to hand back their degrees if the University does not divest on May 18th. This is both a matter of principle and an attempt to wield Oxford’s prestige against it. In the words of Sunniva Taylor, an alumna who has made this pledge, “This is not just a question of integrity for me. I want to use the privilege that having [an Oxford degree] gives me to try and shake things up; to use my power to draw attention to others. The University of Oxford still has a lot of influence – nationally and globally – and so the choices it makes about where it puts its money really do matter.”
Critics of divestment, such as the one in Nature this week, misidentify its objectives. The aim is not to push the stock price of non-renewable energy companies down or even to raise awareness – it is about recognising that investment is a political statement and using it thus. In the case of universities, it is about challenging the dissonance between producing anti-climate change research and building for the future, and profiting from the drivers of climate change. As Jeremy Leggett, who has pledged to hand his degree back, put it, “I don’t think universities should be training young people to craft a viable civilisation with one hand and bankroll its sabotage with the other.”
The effects of the divestment campaign are already being felt – Deutsche Bank published a report earlier this year forecasting peak carbon rather than peak oil as the leading driver of oil prices, and HSBC has advised clients that fossil fuel companies will become ‘economically non-viable’. But the divestment movement is not about responding to financial incentive: it is about creating financial incentive that is ethically sound. For the wealth of our institutions to be aligned with the success of fossil fuel companies is to endorse their extraction, exploitation, pollution and lobbying against effective climate policy. To stay invested in this industry is a political statement. This is not the first time that divestment has been brought to Oxford. Whether against South African apartheid, arms manufacturing or the tobacco industry, divestment has a rich history as an effective tool within wider campaigning, and with institutions from SOAS to the British Medical Association to the World Council of Churches already cutting their investments in fossil fuels, Oxford’s continued inaction would bring it down on the wrong side of history.
Every voice counts towards Monday’s decision. Please direct any alumni you know to promise to withhold donations until Oxford divests, and to the degree hand-back pledge. Students can sign the general petition online, and ask their tutors to sign the academic open letter and contact Cara Turton-Chambers (Hertford) about passing a motion of support in your common room. There will also be a demonstration at 4pm outside the RadCam this Saturday (16th May) – please come along.
