Consider it a good sign for the growing movement for divestment from fossil fuels: Middlebury College president Ronald Liebowitz announced today that the college is initiating a “formal process” to investigate divestment.
In an email to students, faculty and staff, Liebowitz also revealed that approximately 3.6 percent of the college’s $900 million endowment — that is, roughly $32 million dollars — is invested in fossil fuel companies. That marks the first time the college has disclosed how much of is endowment is tied up in the industry.
While the announcement isn’t, by any means, a firm commitment to divest, the email sparked encouragement among students on campus campaigning for divestment. The divestment movement is spreading to college campuses across the country as climate activist and Vermont resident Bill McKibben headlines a bus tour to encourage schools, churches and foundations to strip their endowment funds of investments in the 200 top fossil fuel companies. McKibben told Seven Days last month that while divestment won’t financially cripple the powerful industry, it could represent an “inherently moral call, saying if it’s wrong to wreck the climate, it’s wrong to profit from that wreckage.”
McKibben, who also serves as a scholar-in-residence at Middlebury College, responded to Liebowitz’s email on Tuesday with a statement through his environmental group 350.org. “President Liebowitz used just the right tone and took precisely the right step,” McKibben’s statement read. “It won’t be easy to divest, but I have no doubt that Middlebury — home of the first environmental studies dept in the nation — will do the right thing in the right way. It makes me proud to be a Panther.”
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I find it laughable that the president can only come up with 3.6 percent of a bloated endowment that’s got to be overflowing with investments in companies and other investment vehicles that are directly destroying our environment and/or funding the military industrial complex. 2012 aside, the Middlebury College endowment’s annual rate of return for the previous two years averaged 17.5 percent. By and large, the types of investments that provide that kind of return are typically evil and destructive. Don’t kid yourself otherwise. The college’s actions in this case are the equivalent of hiding money in offshore accounts. I’d love to know what the loose definitions are that the college is using to determine what falls into which category. Why do I have a feeling that companies like Nike, Walmart, Coca Cola, Boeing, etc. made the cut? Their’s nothing sustainable or peaceful about companies like these (or their equivalents). I hope the student’s and alumni who are pushing divestment call this blatant white- & green-washing out.
Divest? Are you serious? Middlebury College is where giant corporations and Military industrialists send their kids to school. Sure as hell regular people can’t afford it.