Get Carbon Off Campus

Note

Benjamin Franta responds to David G. Victor's recent essay "Carbon on Campus."

David Victor evaluates two issues facing universities today: fossil fuel divestment and fossil fuel industry funding of academic research. His assessments of movements for the former and against the latter are grim: divestment is "a symbolic sideshow" because it will not help to "starve big carbon of capital," while critics of industry patronage fail to appreciate the costs of giving up funding. I will respond to these views in turn.

First, Victor fundamentally misunderstands the purpose of divestment. It is but one tool of climate change activism, and its goal is not primarily to starve big carbon of capital, at least not directly. The immediate purpose of divestment is to force hard, accountable moral analyses to take place and to put an end to equivocation and dissembling on climate change by demanding action involving real money. Doing so helps to shift institutional and social norms and to democratize the climate debate....

Continue reading: http://bostonreview.net/us/benjamin-franta-get-carbon-campus