Divestment at the University of California has a greater meaning than whatever practical effects can be achieved by its implementation.
Fundamentally, it’s about furthering a moral goal that is more important in the long term than immediate donations or investment returns.
Yet despite student protests, the UC Board of Regents is expected Wednesday to vote to keep the University’s investments in fossil fuel companies for more immediate monetary payoffs. To offset this decision, the regents may invest $1 billion in companies that support sustainability over the next five years, in line with the UC Task Force on Sustainable Investing’s recommendation last week.
Instead of hypocritically choosing to promote “positive investment” in sustainability at the same time it puts $3 billion of its $91 billion portfolio into fossil fuel companies, the UC should divest from fossil fuels.
The monetary effects of the UC’s divestment from fossil fuel companies would be just a “pinprick” to those companies – the results of a “storm in a storm in a teacup,” according to UCLA finance professor and economist Ivo Welch. But divestment is about making a moral decision and a statement about principle, about what the UC stands for and prioritizes.
In their report last week, officials said divesting from fossil fuels could hurt programs for students at the University by losing millions of dollars in stocks.
Still, some other studies say it is unlikely that divestment will cost the UC a significant amount of money. Certain research firms have even found that universities could have made more in the long run if they divested a while ago, according to the Associated Press and a report from Fossil Free Stanford.
In a statement last week, UC chief investment officer Jagdeep Singh Bachher claimed “the University is not in the business of taking the easy route.”
But avoiding divestment by throwing about 1 percent of the UC’s portfolio at sustainability is the easy route.
What the regents aren’t saying publicly is how donors and other powerful friends of the UC will respond if it divests. In that sense, concerns about the UC losing money may be legitimate. But what are we willing to sacrifice to keep donors happy?
It’s important to be honest with students about decision-making, and it is also important to be honest internally. If the University is going to call itself a “living laboratory for sustainability” on brochures and say in speeches that “there is no reason the UC can’t lead the world in (the) quest” for sustainable technology, then divesting from fossil fuels is a given.
If there were no adverse consequences to divestment, the UC would do it in an instant. The regents made the right decision to divest from tobacco and guns years ago, and they have the potential to show students they are listening to them and are willing to stand by their beliefs this week.
Let’s see how they like studying in the dark and never being able to charge the smartphones they buy from the corporations they claim are evil.
I wish I had that much free time
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letter to editor: I send this with respect but with obvious deep difference with your views: Thx: HS
Your editorial on divestment confirms the hundreds of examples of how cruel are the values of Leftism. You rally for issues against the core values of America. Fossil fuels have brought us the blessings of dignity and wealth for centuries. It puts the energy in the gas tank of the poor guy driving down the road to work in a tire shop. It builds the heart lung bypass machine that saves the life of a child with congenital heart disease. And you wish to order your neighbor to stop using this form of cheap, intensely efficient and available energy because you kinda like windmills and solar panels? How utterly mean and foolish.
No one wants to drown from rising seas, but thousands of capable scientists around the world debate intensely whether the 5% of carbon placed into the atmosphere by humans each year will have any affect on human civilization a century hence. And you rally behind the hysteria and pseudoscience of global warming-now climate change?
The values of Leftism are antithetical to American values. It makes me proud to be a conservative fighting true evils like Islamo-fascism taking over large parts of strategic areas of the world and slaughtering Christians, Israelis and other infidels in their wake; like fighting jack booted communist tyrants oppression millions in China, North Korea and Cuba; like fighting Leftism in our Democratic party, a party in love with our current un-American, unconstitutional Leviathan- sized government- a transformed America crushing our freedoms, bankrupting our college students futures, crushing our dignity, and taking massive amounts our private property.
And you Leftist editorial board fight plant food. Impressive.
By the way, I don’t mean to be mean or patronizing, but why don’t you show us you are strong American men and women and stand behind your views ? Throw out your laptops and iphones. Stop using cars, buses, airplanes, hospitals, medications, anything made of plastic and air conditioning. Put some skin in the game and walk the walk instead of just feeling good about yourselves by telling others how to live their lives.
My opinion given With respect: HS
I don’t mean to be patronizing but maybe try to get out of the intellectual bubble of Leftism at our Universities. Check out some American values at these great 5 minute youtube “courses.” If you remain on the Left at least hear what the best arguments from the American value system. If you read one book in college without the silly words micro-aggression, income inequality, white privilege, race/class/ and gender in them, try to read Pragers great book (below)
describing the American vs. Leftist value system. Then go on your way and do what you need to do in life .
READ: Still the Best Hope/Why the World Needs The American Value System to Triumph
LISTEN TO: 5 minutes: Prager: The core of the American value system:
http://www.prageruniversity.com/Political-Science/The-American-Trinity-2nd-Edition.html#.UmkfrihQNS8
2. 5 minutes Prager :Happiness is a moral obligation
http://www.prageruniversity.com/Life-Studies/Happiness-is-a-Moral-Obligation.html#.UmkgfyhQNS8
3. http://www.prageruniversity.com/Political-Science/The-Government-vs-the-American-Character.html#.U9EoASg2VS8
4. 5 minutes: What matters most in life- Values
http://www.prageruniversity.com/Life-Studies/What-Matters-Most-in-Life.html#.VBG9gyg2VS8
5. 4. 5 minutes: Prager: The welfare state and the selfish society
http://www.prageruniversity.com/Political-Science/The-Welfare-State.html#.UmkgBChQNS8