The Cornell Daily Sun (https://cornellsun.com/tag/fossil-fuels/page/2/)
After seven years of student activism to encourage the Board of Trustees to divest from fossil fuels, Climate Justice Cornell is escalating the fight by filing a complaint to New York Attorney General Letitia James to initiate an investigation into Cornell University’s continued investment in fossil fuels.
Students slammed their palms and posters against the windows of the Friday afternoon Board of Trustees meeting in Myron Taylor Hall, chanting, “We won’t rest ’til you divest!”
Climate activism icon, leader of the fossil fuel divestment movement and founder of 350.org Bill McKibben offered his advice to Cornell students passionate about taking action against university investment in fossil fuels on Wednesday evening.
Joanne DeStefano, the University’s executive vice president and chief financial officer, canceled her planned meeting with Climate Justice Cornell to draft steps toward a more sustainable campus after learning that the group intended to present a series of demands to her. Although DeStefano herself encouraged CJC members to set up the meeting, she canceled the gathering after reading a copy of the meeting agenda attached to an email to meeting attendees by Elizabeth Chi ’18, ex-campaign coordinator of CJC. “I agreed to this meeting as a courtesy to share our policies and to help you to understand the Board of Trustees’ position regarding divestment,” DeStefano wrote to Chi in an email, adding, “I must say that I am extremely disappointed to learn that your purpose for the meeting is to make a series of demands.”
The group used the word “demand” in its agenda as indication of some of its priorities and goals, according to Jenny Xie ’20, a member of the financial task force for CJC. “My stomach dropped as soon as I read the email,” said Julie Kapuvari ’19, CJC member. “We had been preparing for weeks.
Howarth explained that methane is 30 percent more effective at trapping heat than carbon dioxide, making it a significant contributor to global warming and a much more dangerous gas.
Rowland explained that current political and economic trends predict negative consequences for investment portfolios dependent on on fossil fuels.
“In extraordinary circumstances, the trustees may determine that direct financial investment in particular companies associates Cornell with actions or inactions that violate the University’s most deeply held values and, therefore, should be avoided, regardless of potential financial return,” she said.
“I share a lot of the concerns that those who support divestment do,” she said. “I just don’t think divestment is the right way to go about addressing those concerns.”
The following is an open letter to President Elizabeth Garrett and the Cornell Board of Trustees:
We write you in your capacity as leaders, both of this community and of others: You have before you, in our five assemblies’ resolutions, an opportunity and a mandate to lead. It is plain that we can never truly lead on the issue of climate change so long as we are invested in and very literally banking on its intensification. It is equally plain that a leadership indifferent to climate change is increasingly problematic. Each of the past three decades has been the hottest on record. Our planet is now warmer than it has been in 250,000 years.