Month: January 2014

Fossil Fuel Divestment

I turn the lights on in the bathroom and a slight uneasiness settles over me. I go to Uncle Harry’s, at first excited to see the avocados available for purchase, but ultimately decide against it since they were grown in California. I need to buy shampoo and am in a hurry so I drive my car instead of walking, though I silently chastise myself for not planning ahead better.

Source: https://www.missioninvestors.org/events/is-fossil-fuel-divestment-right-for-your-institution

I consider myself an environmentalist, however most days I do not feel I have earned that title. It can be very exhausting when everyday things most people don’t think twice about fundamentally challenge my convictions. Sometimes I make the decision that is best for the environment and sometimes I give into the ease of this carbon-powered life. Looking around though, I realize that many of these decisions are not truly free decisions for me or for anyone else to make, especially when it comes to energy.

65% of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions are a product of burning fossil fuels in order to generate electricity, heat buildings, power vehicles, etc (1). We all use and depend on fossil fuels on a daily basis. However, the uncomfortable truth is that if we intend to limit the warming of the planet to the IPCC (International Panel on Climate Change) recommended 2°C, 60-80% of the current fossil fuel reserves held by the top fossil fuel companies must remain in the ground (2).

These sobering facts have helped launch fossil fuel divestment campaigns at over 500 colleges and universities across the nation (3). Thus far the majority response from administrators and university presidents at the country’s most prestigious academic institutions such as Harvard, Cornell and Brown, has been “No.” (4)

The most oft cited reasons that university presidents have given in support of their decision not to divest are 1) if universities sell their shares in the top 200 fossil fuel companies they lose their ability to influence those companies through shareholder advocacy, 2) it is hypocritical to divest from fossil fuels when we continue to rely on them in our daily lives, 3) divesting from fossil fuel companies could hurt the endowments’ returns.

In response to the first argument about shareholder advocacy, while it can be an effective way of creating change in regards to fossil fuel companies, their entire business model is based around finding, refining and burning more and more fossil fuels. In order to avoid climate disaster we need to see a major shift in how we produce energy. Shareholder advocacy might work for smaller changes such as fairer labor practices, but we need to send a message to fossil fuel companies that it is socially irresponsible for them to continue operating as they do at a very fundamental level.

Some people have argued that fossil fuel companies have made positive steps by investing in renewable energy projects. However, if you look at the numbers, the top fossil fuel companies have committed a very small portion of their budgets to developing renewable energy, and some have already started pulling out of renewable energy projects (5). But really the bottom line is, as long as fossil fuel companies continue to seek out new fossil fuel reserves, they are threatening the future of us all.

The second argument regarding the hypocrisy of divesting while we still depend on fossil fuels is quite flawed. Yes it is unfortunate that we are so dependent on fossil fuels, but we need to start somewhere. Fossil fuel companies are not going to change out of the goodness of their hearts. They need to be shown that people are serious about demanding change.

In our highly market-based economy, money is a powerful force. Removing one’s money from a company is a great way to demonstrate you do not support that company’s practices in a language they will understand loud and clear. Plus, it frees up money to invest in renewable energy projects and research to help speed along the energy transition!

The third argument that divesting from fossil fuels could hurt the endowment is incredibly short sighted. Pressure is already mounting against the fossil fuel companies, particularly the coal industry. The percentage of electricity produced in the US by burning coal is shrinking fast and coal assets are decreasing in price (6). As divestment campaigns continue to spread and gain traction, it is not unreasonable to think that the same fate awaits oil and gas, causing some financial analysts to warn of an impending “carbon bubble” (7).

Additionally as the demand for environmentally responsible investment portfolios increase, it will become easier and easier for major institutions to divest. Furthermore divesting from fossil fuels has the potential to improve endowment returns as a number of divested portfolios have enjoyed increased returns as compared to a typical portfolio including fossil fuels (8).

No one is saying that divesting from fossil fuels is going to be easy, but I can’t think of a better reason to try hard than to prevent massive climate disruption.

References:
(1) http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/files/2013/05/ecofys-world-ghg-emissions-flowchart.png
(2) http://www.carbontracker.org/wastedcapital
(3) http://campaigns.gofossilfree.org/
(4) http://www.harvard.edu/president/fossil-fuels
http://brown.edu/about/administration/president/2013-10-27-coal-divestment-update
http://www.sustainablecampus.cornell.edu/blogs/news/posts/op-ed-from-president-skorton-divestment-a-complicated-issue-for-universities
http://www.middlebury.edu/newsroom/archive/524638/node/459563
http://www.swarthmore.edu/board-of-managers/an-open-letter-of-divestment-.xml
(5) http://www.bizjournals.com/albuquerque/blog/morning-edition/2013/04/bp-wants-to-sell-its-wind-farm-business.html
(6) http://www.asyousow.org/health_safety/coal.shtml
(7) http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2013/apr/19/carbon-bubble-financial-crash-crisis
(8) http://631nj1ki9k11gbkhx39b3qpzua.wpengine.netdna-cdn.com/files/2013/06/institutional-pathways-final-061813.pdf

Biodiversity Hotspots as a Conservation Strategy: Not So “Hot”?

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I’ve always loathed the either-or, true-false question that students are often frustrated with. That, however, is the kind of question I faced as a 14-year-old on a father-daughter whitewater-rafting trip through the Grand Canyon.

During the bus ride that brought my father and I to the launch point, we watched a video about the triumphs of whitewater-rafting pioneers as well as the woe in environmentalists’ inability to save Grand Canyon’s sister Glen Canyon from being dammed. The film’s before-and-after footage depicting the disappearance of Glen Canyon’s wispy hues toyed with my emotions, and I couldn’t imagine anything but the pristine canyon safeguarded from human profligacy. Nonetheless, a few hours later while the Colorado River licked the shore of our campsite, my father had the nerve to say he also would have dammed Glen Canyon since it provided people with water and hydropower. My anger at him waned after I realized that it was really directed towards the either-or extremes of the question at hand—leave the canyon entirely alone, or drown the ecosystem to meet human needs. Was there no middle ground?

This polarized question is inherent in the contemporary “hotspots strategy” for protecting organismal biodiversity, valued for medicinal opportunity, food and material provision, and protection from natural disaster. The policy, crafted by Norman Myers of the University of Oxford in 1988, funnels funding into “hotspots,” threatened regions that harbor high species “richness,” or large plant diversity. Today, Conservation International (CI) embraces 34 hotspots home to 50% of world plant species, hoping to protect them by establishing national parks and prohibiting human use and settlement.

CI’s track record has not been so hot, however. By cordoning off these areas, the policy pits humans’ wellbeing against nature’s. In fact, this tension is exacerbated by the fact that the 34 hotspots are also home to some of the most impoverished human populations in places like Burundi, Sierra Leone, and Somalia. Increasingly, with millions of already destitute people now estranged from their homes and income, governments have had to make some tough choices. For instance, in 2005 Kenya’s president Mwai Kibaki returned Amboseli National Park to its original Maasi inhabitants, a reflection of burgeoning discontent.

With more aid from the international community, the picture doesn’t get any better. When revealed in 2007, Ecuador’s ITT-Initiative to safeguard Amazonian rainforest from oil extraction was hailed by environmentalists as “unprecedented.” Ecuadorian President Correa promised protection and no drilling in parts of the Yasuni National Park hotspot on the condition that international donors would reimburse half of lost oil revenue. When the money failed to materialize this past August, however, Correa abandoned the initiative, opening the park up to the petroleum industry.

In addition to this notion of a vacillating pendulum incapable of finding a middle ground, the hotspots strategy is riddled with a spectrum of logistical concerns. For instance, the system exhibits a mismatch between species richness and endemism. A 2013 study analyzing the effectiveness of the hotspots approach and its species richness benchmark in the Southern Central Andes of Argentina discovered that only 19% of endemic species had half of their range protected. This was due to safeguarding the highest plant diversity regions in humid forests with little endemism while largely disregarding the less rich but highly endemic arid regions.

This incongruity causes the hotspots paradigm to neglect the world’s largest tropical desert, the Sahara. The locale’s low species richness renders it insignificant by hotspots standards; though the Sahara covers half of Africa’s landmass, it received only 12% of Global Environment Facility funding to Africa from 1991-2009. The result is that 12 of 14 large vertebrates endemic to the Sahara are considered by the IUCN Red List to be either extinct or in danger of extinction—a drastic blow to insight scientists can gleam about genetic bases to water stress and extreme temperatures.

Thus, what we need to both circumvent such shortcomings and create a middle ground in conservation is a shift in paradigm away from biodiversity hotspots. In order to augment public salience for conservation, we must emphasize ecosystems whose degradation affects human wellbeing—whether that includes such services as water filtration and climate regulation or food provision and inspiration, an “ecosystems services” approach championed by chief scientist at the Nature Conservancy Peter Kareiva. The answer thus lies not in alienating humans from the environment, but rather in establishing them as stakeholders in their communities. Sustainable use programs on a local level entailing reforestation, ecotourism, and even market-based approaches like transferable fish quotas can go a long way in transforming the otherwise either-or conservation question into a multi-faceted approach.