Eco-Rant #2: Divestment

Tom Steyers shocked us today with his inconveniently accurate statistics and data regarding climate change and the benefits of divesting from fossil-fuel corporations. Let me edit a section of my last sentence—Tom Steyers shocked MOST OF US today. Not Philip Decker. Known to most PEA students as “the Shostakovich boy” and to Dmitri Shostakovich as “that kid who keeps talking about me and should lay off me once in a while jeez,” PKD refuses to acknowledge the global issue surrounding us all. As a great politician might do, I’m going to tell Philip he’s wrong because he doesn’t agree with my ideas. So, Philip, listen up. What really matters in the present day is the sheer quantity of carbon emissions floating around in our atmosphere. We. Don’t. Want. That. Carbon. Bad.Now you might say, “How will our divestment affect the entire world in a substantial manner and reduce carbon emissions?” If we were the only institution to do so, there would be no effect. We would simply feel good about ourselves, knowing that we contributed to the solution (no matter how miniscule that contribution might be). It would be a mere moral accomplishment. But we are not the only institution approaching divestment— institutions across the globe are considering the idea. Some have made the plunge, some are on the edge, some are cowering with their friends by the lifeguard, and some haven’t even put on their bathing suits, as they continue to mindlessly drown themselves in Shostakovich’s six concertos (PHILIP, THAT’S YOU!)I’m proposing that we, the institutions of America, invest in divestment together. For, when every investor takes their money elsewhere, the evil oil companies will remain, naked and powerless, begging us for forgiveness (which we will not give). Currently, in my opinion, which is correct, the idea of divestment is like an Assembly that just finished—people are considering whether to give the speaker a standing ovation, or to clap formally and politely. When one person decides to stand, the audience will follow, eventually standing as one and clapping unanimously. If the elite institutions of America represent that one leading student, the remaining institutions will surely follow. So, Philip, if you take anything away from my lecture, let it be this: we must divest together. It doesn’t have to occur overnight, but it must occur. We can no longer support the dirty activities of oil companies. Clean energy is just around the corner. But our first step towards that corner is divestment.