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December 6th climate strikers demand U of MN fossil fuel divestment



Climate activists across the globe and around the U.S. will be striking on Friday, December 6th. Here in the U.S. the strikers will be demanding that politicians seeking office in the 2020 elections publicly state their unqualified support of Green New Deal legislation if they want the electoral support of the climate strikers.
Thanks to Wikipedia
Here in Minnesota, the student led movement “Fossil Free Minnesota” is also demanding that the University of Minnesota divest its investment portfolio of fossil fuel companies. The organization, which has been campaigning since at least 2013, states as follows:

“Because it is unconscionable to pay for our education with investments that will condemn the planet to climate disaster, we call on the University of Minnesota to immediately freeze any new investment in fossil-fuel companies and to divest within five years from direct ownership and from any commingled funds that include fossil-fuel public equities and corporate bonds.“

The U of M has been tortoise-like in its response, but divestment from fossil fuel stocks by universities and colleges is not a radical action. In September, following a lengthy campaign by students and faculty, the University of California announced it will divest its $83 billion in endowment and pension funds from the fossil fuel industry. The move by the governing officials of the vast university came just before September’s global climate strike.

“This is the biggest single commitment by any educational institution in the world and it represents a true watershed,” said Bill McKibben, author and founder of the environmental group 350.org the on-line magazine Cal Matters.

Like the climate strike, the movement to divest is global. An April 2018 article in the British magazine DeSmogUK noted that the United Kingdom had emerged as the world leader in university divestments, with over eighty-billion pounds in divestments at that time.

“I’m very proud of the University’s decision. Climate change is one of the world’s biggest challenges. Over the past few years, we have thought hard about how to respond to that challenge. This change in our investment strategy is a vital step on that journey,” Professor Charlie Jeffery, Senior Vice-Principal of the University of Edinburgh, told DeSmogUK.

Numerous other colleges and universities in the United Kingdom have divested from fossil fuel investments. But their decisions haven’t been entirely based on a desire to preserve a hospitable climate. University administrators have also been interested in protecting their investments and, it seems, fossil fuel investments are bad business these days.

“We believe hanging onto fossil fuel assets is a financial risk,” chief investment officer Jagdeep Singh Bachher and Richard Sherman, chair of the University of California’s regents’ investment committee, wrote in the Los Angeles Times last September.

Fossil Free Minnesota says that the University of Minnesota has a moral and ethical responsibility to divest from fossil fuel investments. Based on the falling value of fossil fuel investments, they also have a financial obligation to all Minnesotans to divest from those investments.

It’s time for the U of M to listen to Fossil Free Minnesota and to divest from fossil fuel investments. Others have led the way. Now is the time for the U of M to follow their lead.

Tim

Central Minnesota Political

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