Response to Harvard’s Endowment Decarbonization Plan

Harvard’s Plan Provides Cover to Fossil Fuels, Fails to Take the Most Meaningful Steps

With its recent announcement of its plans to decarbonize its endowment by 2050, Harvard has finally acknowledged that its investment strategy must play a role in mitigating the climate crisis. Until today, the administration has claimed that the endowment should not be used for political purposes. Now, thanks in no small part to years of student, faculty, and alumni activism, it has acknowledged its duty to mitigate the emissions its endowment has been fueling for decades.

This is a step in the right direction. However, today’s announcement falls far short of divestment and is insufficient for three primary reasons. First, not only does it permit continued investments in the fossil fuel industry, but it clings to the hope that these companies will suddenly become cooperative partners in the energy transition. It’s nonsensical to discuss decarbonization while maintaining investments in fossil fuels. Second, it leaves the university a wide margin to calculate portfolio emissions however it chooses. Until we know how these calculations will be done, we cannot even be sure if this announcement constitutes a meaningful change in investment strategy. Finally, its timeline is far too protracted. Scientists have made it clear that 2050 is much too late a horizon for the energy transition.

A good-faith effort to reach carbon neutrality would have acknowledged that divestment is the logical first step. Instead, by not including divestment as one of its commitments today, Harvard is continuing to provide social and economic capital to the forces standing in the way of a decarbonized future. As the world burns, Harvard continues to defend the arsonists.

While institutions such as the University of California, Georgetown, Brown, and just today, Oxford University, have already committed to fossil fuel divestment, the Harvard Corporation has chosen not to follow their lead and act forthrightly. Its inaction only shows us the importance of putting younger and more diverse representatives of our community, and those committed to the principles the university preaches, into positions of power. Continuing to invest in the fossil fuel industry is locking us into a future that we cannot afford. By evading divestment, Harvard is once again standing with fossil fuel companies and against its students’ futures. We will continue to call on Harvard to disclose, divest, and reinvest, and finally separate itself from the industry destroying our futures.

Press inquiries: ffdivestharvard@gmail.com