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T H E I N D E P E N D E N T D A I LY AT D U K E U N I V E R S I T Y
MONDAY, JUNE 1, 2020
DUKECHRONICLE.COM
ONE HUNDRED AND SIXTEENTH YEAR, ISSUE 1
THE PUSH FOR DIVESTMENT By Margot Armbruster Contributing Reporter
Nathan Iyer Contributing Reporter
Thirty-five years ago, a group of 50 students gathered outside the Allen Building, chanting, “Duke, Duke, we can’t hide. We know we support apartheid. Divest now.” They demanded that Duke divest its holdings operating in apartheid South Africa. By May 1986, after campouts and class strikes, the Duke Board of Trustees, like those at hundreds of universities across the country, relented. The combined divestments fueled international pressure, contributing to the racist South African regime’s ultimate collapse. College students, by leveraging their schools’ financial and social power, had helped drive real change. In 2014, students once again called on Duke to sell holdings, this time in fossil fuel corporations that they condemned for funnelling billions of dollars into killing climate change legislation, polarizing the public and spreading disinformation. Duke declined. Two years ago, Duke students made another push for fossil fuel divestment. But after thousands of petition signatures, dozens of events, 11 Chronicle op-eds, 96 pages of memos and a unanimous Duke Student Government Senate resolution, Duke refused to commit to divestment. (Both authors of this piece attended meetings of the Duke Climate Coalition, a prodivestment group, during this time period, and one wrote an op-ed in The Chronicle supporting divestment.) We spoke to student divestment leaders and administrators to learn from their experience. Students told us a story about bureaucratic inertia, delay and what they consider a battle for the future of our fragile planet. Administrators, however, argue that divestment would accomplish nothing because Duke’s fossil fuel holdings are very small. What follows is the history of the push for fossil fuel divestment at Duke, and of the clashing perspectives that have prevented it from happening.
2012: Doing the math
It was November 2012. Author and environmentalist Bill McKibben had booked a talk at Duke. His mission: convince the campus and the world to “do the math” on climate change, then mobilize to avert global catastrophe. The math in question first appeared that summer in a viral front-page Rolling Stone article, where McKibben broke down the climate crisis in three numbers: two, 565 and 2,795. Two degrees Celsius, the conservative consensus for the rise in global temperatures beyond which consequences like extreme weather, rising seas and food shortages threaten civilization itself; 565 billion tons, the carbon dioxide we can burn and stay within that two-degree limit; 2,795 billion tons, the weight of known fossil fuel reserves. If you do the math, you will realize we have to keep 80% of known reserves in the ground. Oil companies are betting against this goal, and they possess staggering geopolitical power. In 2011, oil producers spent $150 million lobbying American legislators against climate action and received $20 billion in direct federal subsidies from the United States alone. So McKibben, who has covered the ecological crisis since the 1980s, set out to take on Goliath with a new strategy—divestment. In theory, divestment is simple: You sell any stock you or your company holds in the top 200 fossil fuel producers, then make a public commitment never to reinvest. A 2013 Carbon Tracker study showed that over the next decade, producers will spend up to $6.74 trillion tapping fossil fuel reserves that would be “unburnable” under the two-degree goal. By halting money flows from banks, governments and institutions like universities, divestment sends a market signal for clean energy transition. Divestment may also make financial sense, with the energy sector underperforming the general market. Expensive fossil infrastructure risks becoming “stranded” as climate policies worldwide reduce demand and prioritize
cleaner alternatives. And divestment proponents argue it helps fight the far-ranging consequences of climate collapse, which include novel diseases, climate migration and food insecurity, among many others.
2012 and 2013: A Fringe Cause
Corrie Hannah, Nicholas School ‘18, got on board. In 2012, she was a first-semester Ph.D. candidate, researching Tajikistan’s water governance and trying to get involved on campus. McKibben, after wrapping up his speaking tour, dispatched a representative to recruit student divestment leaders. Hannah attended an interest meeting on campus, and Divest Duke was born. In the beginning, it was slow going. The 10-to-15-person team relied heavily on the playbook (both figurative and literal—after we spoke on the phone, Hannah sent us a 34page Duke Partnership for Service handbook
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A HISTORY
on “How to Advocate for Investment Responsibility at Duke”) of previous divestment movements, which included the South Africa protests of the 1980s, a successful push to divest from Sudan in 2007 and Duke’s 2012 commitment to shareholder advocacy against conflict minerals. Divest Duke collected around 100 petition signatures, put flyers on cars during basketball games and worked for the revival of the Advisory Council on Investment Responsibility, which then-President Richard Brodhead eventually reinstated in December 2013. In Spring 2013, Divest Duke drew up a proposal informed by the University’s broader environmental policy—since 2007, Duke has claimed to be on track for carbon neutrality by 2024, though this plan has notable caveats— and marched into Brodhead’s office hours. See DIVESTMENT on Page 11
Chronicle File Photo Students held a rally in front of the Allen Building in 2014 to promote divestment
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