It’s a good divestment
Mohawk and Mcmaster students want schools to take their money out of the fossil-fuel business
Students today have been cast as a generation defined by apathy. Pundits and politicians routinely make sweeping statements about us being unconcerned with politics. But despite these proclamations, a new movement is growing on campuses across Canada.
In Hamilton, Fossil Free McMaster and Divest Mohawk are examples of groups proving the stereotype wrong. Both groups — made up of students, alumni, faculty and community members — have witnessed the effects of climate change firsthand: the increase in intensity and frequency of storms, more homes flooded and more damage to local agriculture.
That is why they want to see their schools’ substantial endowment funds divest from the fossil fuel industry, an industry that is fuelling the climate crisis. They believe it is unconscionable to finance education with investments that will condemn the planet to climate disaster. They are asking for an immediate freeze of any new investment in fossilfuel companies. They want divestment of existing funds to occur within five years.
The students are urging Mohawk College president Rob MacIsaac and McMaster University president Patrick Deane to take the next steps and commit their schools to the divestment strategy.
McMaster and Mohawk signed the Hamilton Climate Change Charter in 2011, agreeing to initiate the mitigation of and adaptation to climate change and to take on responsibility and act to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Both campuses have a sustainability office and promote their leadership in sustainability. McMaster has a Centre for Climate Change and Mohawk has a new degree in renewable energy engineering.
We are simply asking that they align their endowment with their values that they demonstrate through their teaching, research, advertising and operations.
A report by Blue/Green Alliance found that investing in renewables creates more jobs than fossil fuel investments. McMaster and Mohawk could be leaders on climate change mitigation and, if they reinvested in solutions, could help build more opportunities for current and prospective students.
Climate change has long been an issue close to the hearts of students. But under the Harper government, students have felt particularly disenfranchised. They watched the dismantling of federal en- vironmental laws facilitate the expansion of one of the dirtiest energy sources on the planet, the Alberta oilsands. Furthermore, students witness the government subsidize these same companies at roughly $1.4 billion a year.
The divestment movement has caught the imagination of students. All of a sudden, students are empowered. They can see a path to change that will achieve more than recycling and compost bins. There is hope that student power can make a real difference.
With more than $400 billion in endowments in North America, divestment has the potential to do similar things for climate change as it did for the movement to end South African Apartheid.
There are now 302 divestment campaigns in the United States; The Nation newsjournal is calling this the fastest growing student movement in decades. The movement in Canada is catching up.
On March 27, 15 campuses took part in the national day of student divestment action, called Fossil Fools Day. Campaigns at McGill, Trent, UBC, UVic and UNB, for example, are highlighting the tomfoolery and injustice of investing in companies responsible for destroying land, polluting the air and water, and violating the rights of people around the world. These companies plan on burning over five times the amount of carbon our planet can handle.
A recent report published by the Centre for Canadian Policy Alternatives contends that Canada has ignored “systemic risk” in the oil and gas sector, and that university endowments and government pension funds should begin a “managed retreat.” The report cautions about the coming “carbon bubble,” and estimates at least 78 per cent of Canada’s proven reserves are “unburnable carbon that cannot safely be combusted without leading to catastrophic climate change.”
Fossil fuels are no longer going to be competitive with other forms of energy and that will result in substantial financial losses.
The divestment movement arose this fall in the United States. So far, five campuses, one NGO, one church, and one municipality have divested.
Fossil Free McMaster and Divest Mohawk each hope their school will be the first Canadian campus to do the same.