College is supposed to prepare students for the future. As a soon-to-be high school senior, I am working my butt off to get ready for college applications and, of course, the experience of college itself. But I have serious concerns about how my future school might be investing in fossil fuels and, if they can’t be convinced to divest by student activists like me, how that might render my college education useless.
With the way the climate crisis is progressing, it doesn't look like Gen Z is going to have much of a future to study for. As temperatures increase all over the world, the oceans acidify, ice caps melt, habitats get destroyed, storms become more frequent and deadlier, and species go extinct, it’s scary thinking about what our world might look like in 10 or 20 years.
According to the United Nations, we have only about 11 years to intervene in order to save life as we know it on earth. In the span of 11 years, we will need to have completely transformed our entire society and the way we get our energy. So lately, I’ve been wondering what exactly it is that I’m preparing myself for with my collegiate aspirations.
We the students are putting in the work, trying hard in high school, taking exam after exam, and going through the college application process, all for a future that requires a stable climate and environment, not the “collapse of civilization,” legendary naturalist and Planet Earth narrator David Attenborough has warned us of. Meanwhile, our leaders are taking donations from fossil fuel corporations — and they’re not alone.
The very institutions some us are planning to attend, universities and colleges across the United States, are still choosing big fossil fuel over our lives by continuing to invest in fossil fuel companies, even if their research points to climate disaster.
I believe we are in the sixth mass extinction, which means this is the sixth time in earth's history that there are species dying off en masse. It's time institutions start acting like they want to stop it. This is especially true for educational institutions, the entire purpose of which relies on there being an actual civilized future to study for. (Not to mention, how can we pay back all these student loans if there’s no future?)
Right now, Ivy Leagues and other prestigious universities are in a place of major irony. Schools like Harvard University have invested their endowment funds in coal, oil and gas companies. In Harvard’s case, their endowment is totals roughly $40 billion, the largest academic fund in the world. As reported by Vox, about 1% of that endowment is invested in public holdings, meaning most of it, by far, is in funds, bonds, and other financial instruments, the nature of which they don’t have to disclose. For the good of their students, Harvard needs to disclose how heavily their endowment is invested in the fossil fuel industry, and then they need to withdraw those investments.
It is a fact that Harvard and other Ivy League schools are invested in fossil fuels, but how much money they have invested is difficult, if not impossible, to know. As of 2018, Yale’s endowment fund was $29.4 billion and Princeton’s was $25.9 billion. In addition to Harvard, Yale and Princeton have fossil fuel ties, but neither has disclosed how heavy those investments are, and none have agreed to divestment. These schools are actively investing in destruction, while at the same time claiming to prepare students for a future that will not exist if we keep doing business as usual.
Harvard has been slow to recognize the growing urgency of the global climate crisis and is taking part in its own type of climate change denial by refusing to divest from the fossil fuel industry. These schools should know better.
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Because of this, a massive student movement for fossil fuel divestment on college campuses has been gaining steam. Students, faculty, staff, and those living around college communities all over the world have been rallying, campaigning, boycotting, striking, and lobbying to get their college to stop funding and investing in companies actively contributing to, or causing, the climate crisis. The problem is that, even though there’s been a massive and ongoing movement on college campuses for divestment for years, the select few with the power typically refuse to budge.
This movement is not unique to the United States. At Cambridge University, management has ignored two years of strong campaigning for fossil fuel divestment. According to The Guardian, full divestment from fossil fuels was supported by hundreds of academics, as well as Labor party leadership and the former Archbishop of Canterbury. Despite all that momentum, those controlling the money didn’t agree to explore divestment until just last month.
Students have the power to move money out of the hands of the fossil fuel industry and take our future back, and the fossil fuel divestment movement is going strong. Over 40 U.S. colleges have already divested from fossil fuels, but there are thousands of colleges that need to follow their footsteps. Because no institution preparing students for a future should also be actively destroying that future at the same time.
In late April, Harvard hosted “Heat Week,” a full week of student and faculty-led actions putting the heat on the institution to divest from the fossil fuel industry once and for all. Ilana Cohen, a first-year student at Harvard and a Zero Hour NYC cofounder, has been leading the student call for divestment at Harvard as part of a global movement of young people to hold their institutions accountable.
“We are calling on Harvard to eliminate coal, oil and gas companies from its nearly $40 billion endowment,” Ilana wrote in a recent op-ed for WBUR. “Since 2012, our movement and other student movements on campus have called for the university to take action, to no avail.”
Even though I am in high school, I joined Ilana and the Harvard divestment movement in April to rally the Harvard community to open their eyes to the school's corruption and hypocrisy. We flooded the Harvard campus in the cold rain, holding up signs, giving passionate speeches, and chanting so loud the whole Harvard main yard could hear us.
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Institutions of higher education, colleges and universities have a responsibility to their students to end their complicity in the disastrous effects of the climate crisis and demonstrate the kind of civic leadership they expect from their students. In the past, universities like Harvard have divested for ethical reasons from companies doing business with the apartheid South African government (though that was only partial) and the big tobacco industry. This climate crisis is no different: It is a matter of human and environmental health, as well as human rights.
It’s time to find out if your college has investments and ties to fossil fuels, and if it does, it's time to bring that up and put up a fight. You can find out more about how to put pressure on your college or university and join the college fossil fuel divestment movement here.
Want more from Teen Vogue? Check this out: Jamie Margolin Knows Climate Justice is the Key to All Justice
