“We strive for 105% support,” chuckled first-year Taylor Cook after reading the section of the most recent Campus feature regarding students opinions on divestment from fossil fuels. Cook’s comment referred to a large info-graphic, which allegedly claimed in bold that, “55% of students support divestment from fossil fuels,” and “50% of students are not for divestment or have no opinion.”
I was not a star on my high school’s math team like Cook, but it didn’t take me long to realize that 50 + 55 do indeed equal 105 and that to have data on 105% of the student body’s opinions on fossil fuels divestment is impossible. I too started to chuckle.
This light-heartedness was soon clouded by motivation to uncover truthful data on students opinions, however, as I realized this issue — divestment — is too important to be reported on inaccurately.
The data purportedly used to create this info-graphic and provide substance for the text alongside it came from the recent SGA student life survey. Lucky for me, I am on the SGA and was able to access the information easily.
I found no errors in the SGA data; all of the categories added up to a clean 100%. Thus, my first order of business is to rectify the data and its portrayal. According to the survey, 55% of students support divestment, 15% of students do not support divestment, and 30% of students have no opinion. Rock-stars Krista Karlson and Day Robins have provided this new info-graph which for one, adds up to 100% and two, does not lump together the “no opinion” and “not for divestment” categories which we feel was an arbitrary and misleading combination.
Unfortunately, my concerns with the quality of the reporting presented in this section of the feature do not end here. The article interviewed two sources for comment on the results of the survey, and despite the fact that a majority of students are in favor of divestment, both sources were highly critical.
In order to make up for the imbalance in the reporting I would like to challenge the thinking of source one, who was quoted saying that, “divestment doesn’t have a shot in achieving what a carbon tax or cap and trade can achieve in reducing emissions.” To this I would say that we are by no means advocating divestment instead of other means of addressing carbon emissions. To the contrary, divestment works to raise the saliency of issues related to climate change and expose and undermine the inordinate power and exploitative practices of the fossil fuel industry so as to build a movement powerful enough to push the carbon emission reduction legislation source one suggests, through our fossil fuel funded legislature.
For those who question whether a divestment movement is really necessary and believe that Congress will pass meaningful carbon reduction legislation just by looking at the facts, let me remind you: we live in illogical times. This past year, 2014, was the warmest year on record. Let’s repeat that: 2014 was the hottest year to date. And yet, Congress has yet to pass a carbon tax or institute a cap and trade program for carbon emissions. And when we look to history, we can’t deny that the most significant pieces of legislation in the last century could not have been achieved without a powerful movement, often with forceful student support, pushing them forward.
In continuation, the second source quoted in the feature displayed concerns about the financial risks of divestment. I have written extensively about the financial argument for divestment in previous op-eds that you can access on the campus website, but to recap: socially responsible investment, and in this case fossil free investing, in fact provides higher-risk adjusted returns. Additionally, in this discussion of costs and benefits I would also like to bring awareness to the costs Middlebury is already accruing by not divesting in the form of damage to our brand and reputation as an environmental leader, and donations to the school from alumni who are unwilling to give money as long as we are invested in fossil fuels.
The section of the feature about which I have been referring had no ending, it merely stopped in the middle of a sentence, an obvious mistake which I can’t help but feel was a little meant to be as it has allowed me to fill in the parts of the article I felt missing. In the same way, I hope everyone in the Middlebury community challenges themselves to learn about and engage with divestment as we move into the next few months of the campaign, as the world burns.
