8 items found for your search. If no results were found please broaden your search.
(12/10/15 4:08am)
So great is the sadness of our times. The recent shootings in Colorado Springs and San Bernadino brought to light a disturbing fact; in the United States this year there have been more days with mass shootings than not in the United States. From Beirut to Kenya to Lebanon to Paris to Syria, the global community is no less spared from violent attacks grounded in racial, cultural and religious discrimination, the need for resources and the desire for power.
Our own campus environment mirrors the turbulence of the world, confirming once and for all that we do not in fact live in a bubble. Just think — if we are so separated from the rest of the world, why does our campus possess the same forms of ingrained racism and widespread mental health concerns that permeate the “outside?” Whether we want to believe it or not, we are firmly grounded in this world and if we are to garner any hope for addressing these challenges, it’s high time we open our eyes and acknowledge the structures of injustice upon which they’re based.
This is essentially the mission of Middlebury’s divestment campaign. Put another way, we at DivestMidd seek nothing if not to raise awareness of the rampant yet often ignored human rights violation of unprecedented proportion: climate injustice.
You may ask – what is climate justice? In short, over the last 300 years, developed nations industrialized via fossil fuel extractive economies. By some disturbing fate of geography, the result of this industrialization – floods, drought, rising seas – have disproportionately affected poorer nations in the global south.
The same goes for the home-front. The consequences of the fossil fuel industry’s actions here in the U.S. – in terms of pollution and economic vulnerability spurred by the all-consuming boom-and-bust nature of extraction – are disproportionately placed on poorer Americans and people of color.
And while rising sea levels, drought and warming temperatures – not to mention the imperialistic practices of the fossil fuel industry itself – have moved into developing countries and stripped the world’s least resourced and most marginalized communities of their lands, livelihoods and cultures. The wealthier countries who caused these devastating effects have done next to nothing. The future of our planet and global peace are threatened as a result.
And nowhere is this more poignant than in Syria. Beginning in 2007, Syria entered a period of severe drought. This period of draught caused the price of food to double and forced millions of small farmers to abandon the countryside for Syrian cities already overcrowded with more than a million similarly desperate Iraqi refugees.
Syria’s representative to the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization feared the situation was contributing to a “perfect storm” that could destabilize the country,and desperately pleaded for foreign aid. Yet, the United States and the rest of the global community remained largely unmoved by the Syrian’s appeal. And while the atrocities of Bashar al-Assad’s regime likely trump the destabilizing effects of the drought in terms of causing the war in Syria, it’s probably “not a coincidence,” as Secretary of State John Kerry recently noted, that the war was preceded by four years of failed rains, which scientists cite as a result of human-induced climate change.
Upon accepting the Nobel Peace Prize in 2004, Wangari Maathai, the first African woman and the first environmentalist to receive the prize, proclaimed that: “there comes a time when humanity is called to shift to a new level of consciousness, to reach a higher moral ground.” At no time has that shift been more necessary than now. Our actions to promote global peace and environmental stewardship must match the gravity of the injustices at hand.
Thus, as we move closer to accomplishing the goal of carbon neutrality, let us celebrate this truly incredible accomplishment, which I may say was a project originally conceived of and designed by a group of student environmental activists. And then let us go forward with the awareness that the severity of our time demands that we move beyond a singular focus on our own “carbon footprint.” In this way we are called to a greater level of responsibility to the global community – the cause of climate justice.
Much of this work begins with awareness about what exactly constitutes climate injustice. In this pursuit, DivestMidd is working closely with President Patton and other members of the administration to bring a series of speakers to campus to educate the community on how we can better align our investments with our environmentally and globally minded values and take new actions to address structures of social and economic oppression that have paved the way for climate injustice.
Our hope is that these forums will spur a broad campus conversation on how we can better work to address the climate crisis by shifting the paradigm of our conception of environmentalism to ensure a just transition towards a sustainable future.
The movement we imagine calls for planetary awareness – the realization that we are all inextricably linked. We seek to address the root structural causes of climate injustice – rampant inequality, the pervasive notion that some lives matter more than others and the idea that the wealthiest can continue to deplete our world’s finite resources at a tragic pace and treat the atmosphere like a garbage dump. It is no coincidence that six of our world’s top 10 wealthiest corporations are involved in fossil fuel extraction.
Some may question whether this movement will be successful. Can we sustain a global climate justice movement, essentially a global movement for justice at its core? A part of me fears the task is too large for us to hold. Even feminist leader Gloria Steinem conceded that women’s liberation would necessarily have to wait until black power was won, though we still seem to be waiting for both to arrive today. From the Chartists and Owenites in Industrial England to the Communist revolution to Occupy just a few years back, movements that have sought such large scale structural changes often fail to achieve their goals.
But a larger part of me fears even more that we don’t have a choice not to try and build this movement, no matter how much we may fail in the process. The seas will rise, disease – spurred by warmer temperatures – will spread rapidly into already vulnerable regions, the rich will continue to profit from the extraction of the poor’s land and labor and the global south will find the consequences of climate change exacerbated and even more difficult to overcome through adaptation. The global north is also now feeling the effects of climate change to an increased degree. This is everyone’s fight. This is not charity. Undoubtedly, we must try to build a successful climate justice movement.
The gravity of our call becomes even more urgent upon the realization that the leaders charged with protecting human society and the planet are doing – this seems to be a trend – next to nothing. The UN climate conference in Paris will likely conclude – for the 21st time since 1992 – without a binding, and therefore effective, commitment from the world’s most powerful countries, who also happen to be the largest emitters. This is because world leaders know a binding treaty is impossible considering Senate Republicans in the U.S. – largely financed by the fossil fuel industry – have vowed to block a binding treaty and any monetary commitment to aid the most affected and least resourced countries in efforts to mitigate the effects of climate change.
As an institution of higher education and a self-proclaimed environmental leader, we are called to inhabit the fullest conception of these identities. Let us see the climate crisis for the human rights violation that it is, and match the urgency of this crisis through grassroots mobilization around education, political change, economic redistribution, restorative justice, socially responsible investment and yet unborn ideas that will enable us to transition towards a more just and sustainable world.
(11/19/15 4:37am)
The topic of this column — the death of the divestment movement — may appear strange, given that it is coming on the heels of The Campus’ editorial endorsement of fossil fuel divestment a few weeks ago, and moreover, because I am, as avid readers of my column know, an active leader in the Middlebury divestment campaign.
(10/19/15 4:34pm)
Issues of environmentalism and racial justice are inextricably linked, proclaimed Van Jones at his keynote speech for the Environmental Studies 50th Anniversary last Thursday night. Jones, an acclaimed environmental and human rights activist, is best known for his efforts to provide opportunities for people of color in under-resourced, inner city communities with access to jobs in green energy infrastructure development. Much of Jones’ recent efforts work to address the monstrosity that is our country’s military industrial prison complex through legislation to reduce the number of incarcerated nonviolent offenders and cut the prison population by 50 percent over the next decade. In short, the prison system seeks to profit from the enslavement of people of color.
If able to survive passage through our ever corrupt political environment, Jones’ plans would result in a drastic cut in governmental funding for the prison system and open up funds which could instead be transferred to green job programs benefitting people of color who have so long born the brunt of the broken prison system.
The large crowd – composed of students and community members of all stripes, cheered elatedly for Jones’ plans and I too, was overjoyed, in part because of the parallels I identified between Jones’ work and my own as a divestment organizer. For those unfamiliar with Divest Middlebury, we are a group of student activists who seek to compel Middlebury to withdraw all of its investments in the top 200 fossil fuel companies and, similar to Jones, reinvest this money in ways that will support the growth of a more sustainable economy.
But when I speak with people about the need to divest our holdings in the fossil fuel industry I don’t receive the same response as Jones did regarding the divestment of funds from the prison system. Many tell me that divestment is “too negative.” For me, this response signals not the ineffectiveness of divestment as a strategy to instigate action on climate change, but rather the great work we still have to accomplish in stigmatizing the fossil fuel industry so that people will cheer for fossil fuel divestment as they cheered for Jones’ call to transfer money away from the prison system.
Thus, here is the truth of the fossil fuel industry – according to research completed by the Carbon Tracker initiative, the fossil fuel industry has five times more carbon dioxide in their proven reserves than the atmosphere can absorb in order that we may stay below the conservative two degrees Celsius marker, which is largely accepted as the threshold for calamitous changes in our climate. The fossil fuel industry shows no qualms towards burning these carbon reserves and the wave of environmental injustices that will result, such as displacement of millions of people of color in the global south.
What’s more, the fossil fuel industry has sought to hinder the debate about climate change through the promotion of disinformation on their own accord and by membership in trade organizations that work to diminish the findings and suggestions of university researchers and policy experts who have built overwhelming consensus around the idea that the emission of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere as a result of the combustion of fossil fuels has and will continue to result in incredibly destructive changes to our climate and must therefore be mitigated immediately.
For an institution of higher education, the fossil fuel industry’s disinformation campaigns should feel especially disgusting and convince us even more of divestment’s importance. As Harvard professor Naomi Oreskes writes: “Why should universities invest in an industry that has deliberately sought to undermine the knowledge that we have produced?”
With this view of the fossil fuel industry, I’m hard pressed to imagine someone who would not deem Middlebury’s divestment campaign, along with the national divestment movement, as partaking in a “positive” step towards changing our culture’s conception of the fossil fuel industry, which proves especially necessary when we realize its most abhorrent of practices – the exploitation of communities of color through the placement of refineries and other health hazards related to the extraction and production of fossil fuels in their neighborhoods. In light of these injustices divestment provides me with the hope that we can rip the fossil fuel industry of its social license to exploit the health and livelihoods of marginalized communities in the same way that the prison system has been dethroned of its license to incarcerate people by virtue of their race and then deem them disposable, a casualty of our throw-away society.
But this is not to say the injustices wrought by the fossil fuel industry are not inextricably connected to those caused by the prison system. Indeed, that was Jones’ whole point, and many of our “reinvestment” options for the divested funds that we take out of the fossil fuel industry are in line with his green jobs programs as I will discuss more in a later column.
(09/30/15 9:36pm)
This past week I witnessed multiple students, clad in full business attire, walk silently out of the room in the middle of class. At first I was confused (was there some mid-day ball I was missing?) but then remembered abruptly what week it was; so did the two men sitting behind me as a second student left the room. One whispered to the other, “that’s our competition.”
(09/17/15 8:43pm)
Summer is a time for reflection. A moment to consider who we are and how we have changed after experiencing the fever dream that is a Middlebury semester. For me, this meant taking a hard look in the mirror and coming to the conclusion that I’m not too happy with some of the choices I’ve made and patterns I’ve fostered over the last half year.
It goes without saying that last semester was a difficult one for many on Middlebury’s campus. We struggled with the untimely death of a peer and the invisible pain of countless others. We grappled with the challenge of achieving “success” at an elite college and, more, having to define that term for ourselves.
I was dangerously sleep-deprived, valued my friendships less than their worth and forgot to live in the present. What’s worse, I felt weak and ashamed for struggling with my sense of self. I felt as if spending time on “personal” issues of balance and body was somehow selfish, a product of first-world privilege.
Who am I to worry about the correct pro- portion of schoolwork time to socializing time when people in our world’s poorest countries are being displaced as a result of climate change and Syrian children are washing up on shores dead due to violence and a global shortage of compassion?
I believed that you could either care about the internal world or the external one. I chose the latter, spending my time writing about environmental injustice and immigrant rights and advocating for Middlebury to divest from fossil fuels. History, let alone our present society, confirmed my assumption.
The 1960’s countercultural movement was divided into two camps. While the politically oriented “New Left” marched in opposition to the Vietnam War, the “New Communalists,” who held no trust in the power of political activism for social change, fled to the countryside to create self-sufficient communities, believing a truly egalitarian society could only manifest itself through a collective transformation of consciousness.
And more recently, in 2008, environmental activist Van Jones bemoaned the environmental community’s inability to unite as a single movement, writing, “Leaders from impoverished areas like Oakland, California, tended to focus on three areas: social jus- tice, political solutions and social change,” while those “from more affluent places like Marin County (just north of San Francisco), San Francisco and Silicon Valley had what seemed to be the opposite approach,” focusing more on “ecology, business solutions and ‘inner change.’”
My hyper-political beliefs are undoubtedly influenced by the fact that I did indeed grow up in that mecca of political activism, Oakland, CA. But it wasn’t until I returned there for a brief hiatus at the end of summer and reflected more intensely on how I want to approach this new semester that my blindly political beliefs changed, or rather morphed into something more true to their core.
Almost subconsciously I began repeating the mantra, “The Personal is Political,” a phrase I likely picked up from a feminist documentary but never understood beyond a basic level. I did some research and discovered the phrase was first used in the title of a 1969 essay by radical feminist Carol Hanisch.
In the essay, Hanisch addresses criticism of “consciousness raising groups.” These were discussion groups that popped up around the country in the late 1960s for women to share their personal, and otherwise unheard, experiences in patriarchal society. They discussed issues such as workplace discrimination, housework, the family and abortion, issues with political dimensions that had been previously been ignored by the dominant New Left groups of the early 1960s. Opponents, mainly women who considered themselves “more political,” considered “consciousness raising discussions” to be nothing but meaningless “therapy” and “personal” work. Hanisch sought to dispel this notion, instead asserting that “consciousness raising discussions” were themselves a form of political action that united women to fight male supremacy as a movement, rather than blaming individual women for their oppression.
A year before the publication of her essay, Hanisch put the sentiment of “consciousness raising discussions” into practice by protesting the Miss America pageant. She argued that women are oppressed by impossible standards of female beauty, including the contestants. Though Hanisch’s Miss America protest had some strategic flaws, the concept – that the personal truly is political – is powerful, and one which I propose we adopt and sustain throughout the year.
As I advocate for President Patton and the Board of Trustees to divest our endowment from fossil fuels, I will work hard to see the ways in which the fossil fuel industry not only exploits the environment of low-income communities and people of color, but also creates a toxic political culture that holds politicians captive to the fossil fuel industry for campaign donations and distracts those politicians’ from building local renewable energy sources. This energy could fuel a new environmentally sustainable, just economy with the capacity to better support my neighbors.
(04/08/15 11:14pm)
From our vantage point in rural Vermont, the border may seem so far away as to be irrelevant, but in fact, our everyday actions and inactions, consciousness and lack of consciousness, impact the immigration system and the people who live within its grasp. For this reason, MAlt El Paso, working together with Juntos: Farmworker Student Solidarity Network, constructed a symbolic border fence and casa de cartón (cardboard house) in the lobby of Davis Library last week. The border, whether we acknowledge it or not, is a constant presence in our lives and one which, due to the injustice and exploitation embedded in the immigration system, we should no longer ignore.
Though almost the entire agricultural sector in the U.S. relies on immigrant labor, we often dehumanize the people upon whom our food and sustenance depend, and subject them to inhumane working conditions. In Vermont, approximately 1200-1500 migrant workers sustain dairy farms large and small but have no access to work visas and are therefore considered undocumented – a.k.a. “illegal” – immigrants. Thus, when migrants experience labor violations they have no way of protecting their rights without exposing themselves to authorities and putting themselves at risk of deportation. University of Southern California sociologist and law school professor Emily Ryo notes that migrant workers view our refusal to grant them legal status as pretty hypocritical considering that we are benefiting from their labor at the same time that we are saying, “We don’t want you.”
In some ways, those who make it to Vermont are lucky. Many who cross the U.S.-Mexico border are detained shortly thereafter, tried in federal court and deported. Some attempt to immigrate because their local agricultural economies have been decimated as a consequence of policies such as the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), which has allowed U.S.-subsidized big agricultural corporations to flood the Mexican market with their products. Since the recession of 2008, however, the border has seen an increase in refugees coming from Honduras, El Salvador and Guatemala to escape violence. Fewer immigrants are coming from Mexico for economic reasons, though we could easily call countless Mexican immigrants “economic refugees,” if such a classification existed.
Street gangs have supplanted state governments in many Central American countries, four of which have murder rates among the top five worldwide. Innocent citizens are subject to extortion, kidnapping and sexual violence. In the meantime, the U.S. is turning a blind eye to this great humanitarian disaster. Refugees are consistently denied asylum, in large part because the laws governing asylum were created during the Cold War and have not been updated to accommodate for non-Soviet Union refugees who may be fleeing their home countries for different, though equally valid, reasons.
Speaking of the Soviet Union, that country – which last time we checked no longer exists – placed sixth in 2013 in number of U.S. asylum grants by country of nationality, ahead of Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador. Needless to say, our asylum system is devastatingly inadequate. Across the country, detention centers are being built to house refugees and other migrants for the months and sometimes years before their trials and likely deportations. Construction is under way in Dilley, Texas, for a new family detention center managed by the controversial private prison giant Corrections Corporation of America (CCA). CCA will be paid $108,000 a year per detainee housed.
These are only some of the many issues linked to immigration and the migrant experience. But now that we have named these problems, what can we do to change things?
One first step that the nation as a whole can take is to recognize just how linked politics is to the border: NAFTA was not just orchestrated by corporations, and the latest additions to the U.S.-Mexico border fence were not built on their own. Policymakers are the ones who decide what steps the U.S. does or does not take in its relationship with Mexico and the rest of Central and South America. If you are eligible to vote in the U.S, look carefully at your politicians and their stances on immigration, and be discriminating. Give your support to those whose political records indicate that they possess an understanding of the multiple layers involved in immigration, rather than promoting a one-dimensional, marginalizing discourse. We should hold our representatives to a higher standard.
So much of what we hear from politicians and news sources serve to dehumanize immigrants and their experiences. Try to be critical: understand that the common discourse about immigrants coming to the U.S. to “take our jobs” is a far cry from reality. Similarly, consider our language: that oft-repeated phrase, “illegal immigrant,” in an instant turns people who might be economic refugees or fleeing violence – people who cross the border because they do not have any other choice – into criminals. When the only way to “legally” enter the U.S. is to wait, suspended in uncertainty, for ten, twenty or even fifty years, it is easy to understand why people cross the border without documentation. Be aware of how you think about, and talk about, immigrants – your language might reinforce a system that dehumanizes the approximately 11.5 million undocumented immigrants currently in the U.S.
Near the end of our MAlt trip, we heard from Ruben Garcia, one of the founders of the migrant shelter Annunciation House, which served as our home for the trip. He asked us one question: “What does the way we treat immigrants say about us?” This striking question does not only apply to the national discourse, but also to the way that we as individuals approach immigration. It is understandable to want to distance yourself from contentious and controversial issues like these. You might feel that you do not have the authority to speak about them, or that they have not affected you personally, or that you do not have a stake in them. But, with a question as big as that of the rights of immigrants in the U.S., we are all already involved, whether we want to be or not.
We built a fence in the library to spread awareness about issues that people often do not realize are so linked to our daily lives. After learning so much, we wanted to take action in whatever way we could. There are so many ways on campus that you can choose to get involved. If you speak Spanish, try coming to Juntos meetings and volunteering with their Compañeros program, or volunteering as a translator at the Open Door Clinic. Speak out for a more just food system in Vermont by getting involved with the Milk with Dignity campaign, a farmworker-driven effort to improve the quality of life for migrant workers on local dairy farms, by signing their petition (accessible at go/milk or go/dignity) and encouraging our administration to support this initiative. Give yourself a challenge: resolve to make more sustainable food decisions, or to not buy any clothing made in sweatshops. If you come across an article or a news story about immigration issues, promise to read the whole thing and think critically about it, rather than turning to another page. Additionally, if you want to learn more about these issues, take a look at some of the articles we have posted online at go/juntos.
We all have the power to take action. Choosing to be aware, and to be conscious, is maybe one of the most important first steps we can take towards making a change. But greater consciousness is still a means to an end, and simply becoming more aware will not necessarily lead to the change we need. If we use our knowledge and awareness to work together and take action, we can be part of the transformation towards a more just society.
(02/26/15 1:50am)
“We strive for 105% support,” chuckled first-year Taylor Cook after reading the section of the most recent Campus feature regarding students opinions on divestment from fossil fuels. Cook’s comment referred to a large info-graphic, which allegedly claimed in bold that, “55% of students support divestment from fossil fuels,” and “50% of students are not for divestment or have no opinion.”
I was not a star on my high school’s math team like Cook, but it didn’t take me long to realize that 50 + 55 do indeed equal 105 and that to have data on 105% of the student body’s opinions on fossil fuels divestment is impossible. I too started to chuckle.
This light-heartedness was soon clouded by motivation to uncover truthful data on students opinions, however, as I realized this issue — divestment — is too important to be reported on inaccurately.
The data purportedly used to create this info-graphic and provide substance for the text alongside it came from the recent SGA student life survey. Lucky for me, I am on the SGA and was able to access the information easily.
I found no errors in the SGA data; all of the categories added up to a clean 100%. Thus, my first order of business is to rectify the data and its portrayal. According to the survey, 55% of students support divestment, 15% of students do not support divestment, and 30% of students have no opinion. Rock-stars Krista Karlson and Day Robins have provided this new info-graph which for one, adds up to 100% and two, does not lump together the “no opinion” and “not for divestment” categories which we feel was an arbitrary and misleading combination.
Unfortunately, my concerns with the quality of the reporting presented in this section of the feature do not end here. The article interviewed two sources for comment on the results of the survey, and despite the fact that a majority of students are in favor of divestment, both sources were highly critical.
In order to make up for the imbalance in the reporting I would like to challenge the thinking of source one, who was quoted saying that, “divestment doesn’t have a shot in achieving what a carbon tax or cap and trade can achieve in reducing emissions.” To this I would say that we are by no means advocating divestment instead of other means of addressing carbon emissions. To the contrary, divestment works to raise the saliency of issues related to climate change and expose and undermine the inordinate power and exploitative practices of the fossil fuel industry so as to build a movement powerful enough to push the carbon emission reduction legislation source one suggests, through our fossil fuel funded legislature.
For those who question whether a divestment movement is really necessary and believe that Congress will pass meaningful carbon reduction legislation just by looking at the facts, let me remind you: we live in illogical times. This past year, 2014, was the warmest year on record. Let’s repeat that: 2014 was the hottest year to date. And yet, Congress has yet to pass a carbon tax or institute a cap and trade program for carbon emissions. And when we look to history, we can’t deny that the most significant pieces of legislation in the last century could not have been achieved without a powerful movement, often with forceful student support, pushing them forward.
In continuation, the second source quoted in the feature displayed concerns about the financial risks of divestment. I have written extensively about the financial argument for divestment in previous op-eds that you can access on the campus website, but to recap: socially responsible investment, and in this case fossil free investing, in fact provides higher-risk adjusted returns. Additionally, in this discussion of costs and benefits I would also like to bring awareness to the costs Middlebury is already accruing by not divesting in the form of damage to our brand and reputation as an environmental leader, and donations to the school from alumni who are unwilling to give money as long as we are invested in fossil fuels.
The section of the feature about which I have been referring had no ending, it merely stopped in the middle of a sentence, an obvious mistake which I can’t help but feel was a little meant to be as it has allowed me to fill in the parts of the article I felt missing. In the same way, I hope everyone in the Middlebury community challenges themselves to learn about and engage with divestment as we move into the next few months of the campaign, as the world burns.
(11/19/14 11:53pm)
We are in a different place than we were last time. During the last public divestment from fossil fuels campaign, that is. Personally, as a first-year last year, the word “divestment” seemed taboo on this campus and I could not fully wrap my head around it. On the one hand, it was sullied because of its connection to previous activist events and a strong, but divisive, campaign that rocked the campus the year before.
However, whenever I spoke with students about the idea of divestment or related issues, we could almost always agree it was an important step to take. In fact, in a student survey administered by the Student Government Association last year 70 percent of student respondents agreed that Middlebury should not be invested in the fossil fuel industry.
Throughout the year I participated in the Socially Responsible Investment Club (SRI), which successfully held a weeklong event with speakers from the business and financial sectors. Additionally, we worked behind the scenes speaking with administrators, Investure (Middlebury’s money manager) and the Investment Committee of the Board of Trustees to figure out how we can better invest our endowment in a way that retains comparable returns while considering environmental, social and governance (ESG) factors.
The necessity of divestment from fossil fuels, however, continued to haunt me and many others in SRI as we realized a saddening truth: we were letting our perception of the last divestment campaign cloud our understanding of, and commitment to, the plain and simple goal itself: divestment from fossil fuels.
The Sunday Night Group (SNG), an environmental group here on campus, has also been working to reboot the divestment campaign. One of several active first-years in SNG Hazel Millard ’18 explains why she was drawn to join the efforts:
“As a senior in high school, I applied to Middlebury College because I wanted to be a member of an institution that was thinking about the immediate and global environment. As a freshman in college, I joined SNG because I wanted to be part of a community on this campus that wanted to impact change.”
Divesting Middlebury’s endowment clearly is the next step. On the brochures I read last year, the claims of “carbon neutrality by 2016” and “one of the most sustainable campuses in the United States” encouraged me to learn more. A logical addition would be “divested from the top 200 publicly traded fossil fuel companies.”
We, SRI and SNG, have joined forces in pursuit of divestment and ask that the students, faculty, staff, alumni and administration shed any preconceived notions about what divestment means and see it for what it is. It is too important not to.
Divestment means taking ownership over our collective future and not abiding by the status quo of the fossil-fuel economy. It means acknowledging that our reliance on and consumption of fossil fuels is causing damage to the climate and marginalized populations around the world. It means having the audacity to envision a sustainable future and harness our power as students to the fullest extent possible to send a message to politicians, markets and the broader community that we must divest from fossil fuels and invest in the foundations of a healthy economy.
Much has changed in the last two years. We as student activists are collectively stronger and bound by a set of principles for this new movement. Additionally, the national movement has progressed tremendously. Cities, foundations and other colleges and universities, such as Pitzer and Stanford, have already committed to divestment. Investment literature has continued to prove that socially responsible investments that screen out fossil fuel companies have higher risk-adjusted returns.
So we ask that you sign the petition to divest Middlebury’s endowment from the top 200 publicly-traded fossil fuel companies (go/divestmidd) and put an orange square on your backpack in solidarity with Divest Midd. Become an active ally in this movement and help us encourage President Liebowitz to not pass up this opportunity to establish his legacy as an important leader in this movement.
We can do better. We can claim our future together and work to make sure that it is marked not by the consequences of our passivity, but by our adherence to a more just, environmentally sound and ultimately prosperous economy and society. For this, we must see clearly: go fossil free, divest.