Should IU be supporting and profiting from the very industry that poses one of the greatest threats to your future?
The international climate change talks now taking place in Paris can seem distant and beyond the participation of students at IU, but there is something much closer at hand that can be done.
Consider joining the local divestment movement known as Reinvest IU, a student organization dedicated to moving IU to cease any new investments in fossil fuel companies, begin divesting from the top fossil fuel companies and reinvest in more socially and environmentally responsible companies.
Divestment efforts at IU are part of a global movement that holds the fossil fuel industry accountable for its culpability in climate change.
The aim of this movement is to raise awareness about the causes of climate change, to further expose an industry that has an iron grip on our government and economy, and to remove funding from fossil fuel production.
The reasons for fossil fuel divestment are many. Climate change has emerged as a grave danger to human civilization.
The rise in global temperatures has already produced weather-caused disasters that have been responsible for the loss of many human lives, drops in agricultural production and staggering economic costs.
The 2014 report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, authored by over 800 of the world’s leading climate scientists, has asserted that we must keep 80 percent of the remaining reserves of fossil fuels in the ground if we are to have any chance at avoiding climate catastrophe. This means stopping business as usual for the fossil fuel industry.
Warnings by financial advisors that investments in coal, oil and gas are becoming risky are intensifying by the day.
This is an industry that is increasingly being stigmatized in a world market that is waking up to the dangers of fossil fuel-induced climate change.
As international pressure mounts to stop burning fossil fuels, these companies will be stuck with stranded assets.
It would be prudent for IU to shift its investments into more financially sound and environmentally responsible companies, which are beginning to out-perform those tied to the fossil fuel industry.
Most importantly, however, the movement for fossil fuel divestment is motivated by profound ethical concerns.
The educational mission of universities like IU aims to provide the best possible future for students.
Underwriting the very companies that threaten that future is incongruent with this mission.
Investing funds to support further development of fossil fuel corporations that seriously undermine the well-being of students’ future is morally reprehensible and makes a mockery of a university’s very commitment to nurturing beneficial futures.
Recognizing that divestment is one of the best tools available to reign in the rampant production of fossil fuels, many universities have already committed to divestment.
Please write President McRobbie (Bryan Hall 200) and respectfully urge him to work with the IU Foundation to find a pathway forward to divest from fossil fuels. And then join Reinvest IU; contact can be made at https://www.facebook.com/reinvestIU.
David Haberman
IU Professor of religious studies
