This Week in Divestment: Massive Victory for UC, Baby Step for HMC as Climate Strikes Approach

University of California sets bold example by divesting over $80 billion endowment and funds, Harvard joins climate group with limited scope

CAMBRIDGE, MA — The University of California system set an exciting example of climate action Wednesday when it announced it would divest its $13.4 billion endowment and $70 billion pension fund from the fossil fuel industry. Meanwhile, the Harvard Management Company announced yesterday that it would join Climate Action 100+, a shareholder-led initiative to engage with the world’s top emitters to meet the Paris Agreement targets.

Fossil Fuel Divest Harvard (FFDH) congratulates the activists within the UC system on a long-fought campaign to hold their institution accountable. The UC’s divestment will act as a signal to other investors and institutions that dirty investments are no longer desirable.

During seven years of campaigning by FFDH, Harvard officials frequently argued that divestment would be an impediment to “shareholder engagement,” yet did not provide any evidence of successful shareholder engagement by the university. While joining Climate Action 100+ is the university’s first conspicuous step towards the nebulous idea of shareholder engagement on reducing GHG emissions, it is nowhere close to a credible climate solution. In reality, shareholder engagement is little more than a form of greenwashing when applied to companies whose core business model is producing and burning the fossil fuels that are destroying our planet.

Following two decades of shareholder engagement by various investors, oil and gas companies still rely on business plans that project growth of fossil fuel consumption for many years to come. If Harvard wants true shareholder engagement, it would call on these companies for rapid phaseout of fossil fuel assets and an immediate halt to fossil fuel exploration. Climate Action 100+ has not done so.

“Large fossil fuel corporations have spent decades lobbying against climate legislation, spreading misinformation, and hiding vital science. Now, they are spending miniscule portions of their budgets on renewable energy and relying on greenwashing to continue their growth and destruction of our planet,” says Campbell Erickson, FFDH. “Harvard should be smart enough to know that shareholder engagement will fail to change their dangerous behavior.”

Part of Climate Action 100+’s platform is to call on companies to disclose information about their fossil fuel emissions. Harvard — which has strongly refused to disclose its own fossil fuel investments — is ironically asking the companies it invests in to disclose their environmental impact. Harvard’s hypocrisy here amounts to climate delayism: choosing slower, less effective solutions over bold and courageous ones.

FFDH will strike this Friday at 11am in the Harvard Science Center Plaza to amplify our call on the university to show climate leadership and disclose, divest, and reinvest its fossil fuel holdings by Earth Day 2020.

Related:

See FFDH Lead Coordinator Ilana Cohen’s article, “It’s Time to Shed Light on Our Elite Institutions’ Dirty Money,” in the Nation, published today.