The year 2014 was the hottest on record since atmospheric record-keeping began more than 100 years ago. Events in our backyards, across the country, around the world – Hurricane Sandy, Hurricane Katrina, increasing ocean acidification, extinctions, irreversible glacial and arctic melting, drought, floods and storms – tell us unmistakably: Climate change is here, now. In his State of the Union address on Jan. 20, President Barack Obama proclaimed, “No challenge poses a greater threat to future generations than climate change.” The threat posed by climate change is not deniable.
Fossil Free UCLA builds student power to hold the University accountable for our concerns about climate change. Fossil Free UCLA will articulate these demands on Global Divestment Day on Friday, Feb. 13, at 12 p.m. outside of Royce Hall. Partner student groups, L.A. environmental justice organizations and indigenous land activists from throughout the Southwest will join us. If you also understand the urgency of this crisis and value student voices in the administration of our university, please stand with us.
Our members bring diverse motivations for fossil fuel divestment: We want to protect the earth, our indigenous home and source of meaning; we want to preserve a reasonable home for future generations; and we want the University to reflect student values. Our members recognize that transferring fossil fuel investments to sustainable assets can even be a net financial benefit to the University. Critically, we also want to reframe climate change as a human and social issue.
Climate change is a social injustice for two obvious but neglected reasons: Firstly, those who bear the greatest burden of climate change will be the poor, people of color, women, youth and other disempowered groups. And secondly, the same institutions that sustain racial, economic, gender-based and other injustices also enable global warming. These institutions represent a weakened public sector, which can’t change our energy infrastructure or right broad social inequalities. The result is a deregulated energy industry, left to police its own impacts, and our democratic process, beholden to corporate interests.
Recent major scientific studies continue to back up the almost hysterical seriousness of the changing global climate. A recent study in the journal Nature suggests 90 percent of U.S. and Australian coal as well as nearly all of the Canadian tar sands oil must stay in the ground for Earth to stay within the internationally agreed-upon 2 degrees Celsius safe limit for a stable, livable climate. Investors call these unburnable fossil fuel reserves “stranded assets,” which are oil, gas and coal reserves that cannot be sold because their use would lead to an unstable climate. In effect, these reserves will most likely be regulated by governments and are therefore an irrational investment. Nevertheless, both Shell and ExxonMobil publicly state that they intend to tap into and sell all of their remaining fuel reserves and suggest the agreed-upon 2 degrees Celsius warming limit is an “impractical” boundary. The UC investment office’s $3 billion investment in fossil fuel companies indicates a tacit acceptance of this global warming business plan, climate crisis and foolish investment decision.
As the premier national public research institution, the UC should dutifully divest the entire UC endowment from the top-200 fossil fuel firms. UC President Janet Napolitano’s recent promise to invest an extra $1 billion in sustainability initiatives is laudable. However, with more than three times that amount invested in companies determined to profit off of the destruction of students’ future because of runaway climate change, this policy is clearly inadequate. No, Napolitano, divestment is not a bumper sticker, as was suggested in a recent interview. Divestment from fossil fuels provides a stark choice. Either the UC administration continues to invest in climate crisis and injustice, or the UC takes a leadership, visionary role in bringing climate policy in line with our public values.
Appel is a graduate student in urban planning and co-chair of Fossil Free UCLA. Lake is a doctoral student in electrical engineering and co-chair of Fossil Free UCLA.