Fossil fuel divestment a supremely silly idea

Note to protesters at UNM: Fantasies can’t replace oil, natural gas and coal

So a few dozen people stood up at a University of New Mexico regents meeting holding up placards demanding that the university divest itself of fossil fuels. Did they also demand UNM pay for unicorn rides before all Lobo quidditch games?

There are so many levels of absurdity in this Astroturf “protest” it’s difficult to know where to begin.

For starters, what do these protestors and their big-budget, anti-energy activist sponsor, 350.org, hope to achieve? Apparently they believe if the university is fiscally irresponsible enough to divest itself of hydrocarbons that those stocks will be unattractive to other investors. Those investments will somehow lose value and as this snowball rolls up La Bajada in July mankind will simply power itself on flodium instead of oil, gas and coal.

What’s flodium you ask? It’s an enormously powerful fuel supply that drops from the hindquarters of unicorns. Unfortunately it evaporates before it hits the ground. But don’t you worry; scientists at Hogwarts are working on a flodium capture device as we speak.

Oil, natural gas and coal provide 82 percent of our energy supply. Wind, solar and flodium top out at 1.8 percent combined. Oil provides about 96 percent of all transportation. Without transportation the modern world ceases to exist. But more than that, oil is a feedstock for the plastics that are in almost every product from computers to phones to everything else that’s within a six-foot radius of where you sit. It surrounds you in your car and is the road under your oil-based tires. Petroleum is in medicine, cosmetics, clothing and on your walls. The only thing more ubiquitous in the modern world than oil is air.

Here’s the big lie that 350.org, ignorant protesters and eco-utopists won’t tell you: There is no replacement for oil. I know. I’ve checked it out.

Coal still powers about 35 percent of our electricity needs and the only reason that percentage has dropped from about half is that a flood of cheap natural gas has displaced it. Even though our coal usage is dropping, world coal consumption is up a stunning 55 percent over the past decade.

Gas is kind of important, too. Aside from generating electricity, heating your home, cooking your food and providing fertilizer to grow crops, it does a lot of other neat stuff as well. (Note to the geniuses holding the signs drawn on petroleum-coated posters with oil-based markers: “gas” is short for natural gas, not gasoline.)

Other than the fact there aren’t scalable alternatives to fossil fuels, there’s the money issue. If UNM were to truly divest of fossil fuels it would need to reject one-third of its budget that comes directly from the wellhead. Those terrible companies that produce those awful fuels and products we use for everything are also the biggest horses in the state’s economy. Who’s up for a 33 percent increase in tuition? Of course, that’s a silly proposition. Without oil and gas New Mexico would have to be adopted by Texas as a welfare case. It would be easier to just shut down UNM and most of the rest of the state. Even Mississippi would laugh at us.

The divestment foolishness isn’t just embarrassing, it’s dangerous. We’ve got politicians all over the country — including our president — who talk as if wind, solar and biomass can replace fossil fuels. This nonsense is leading to bad public policy that’s endangering our ability to produce the power and fuels that make our world function.

State Sen. Jerry Ortiz y Pino is in favor of UNM divesting of fossil fuels. He told the Journal that it’s time the university recognize “hard scientific facts.” Reading about ignoramuses demanding the impossible and the dopey is annoying, but when members of the state Senate join in we know we’re in trouble. I suggest Sen. Pino stop wearing out his Harry Potter DVD and pick up a fifth-grade science book. The new edition is out, and there’s no mention of flodium.