With the exception of some who for ideological or other reasons diminish or even deny climate change, most thinking people agree that climate change is happening, and it’s happening for real. The increasing number of freak weather events and extreme seasons are just a few amongst countless examples out there to demonstrate that the earth’s climate is changing. The burning of fossil fuels by human activities is cited by scientists as a major cause for higher average global temperatures. Many of the most risk-prone areas around the world are in the Global South. In addition, petroleum and coal companies, the biggest contributors to global warming, are also big polluters of water and the air, not just destroying eco-systems and the natural world, but also causing health issues for human beings.
One of Connecticut College’s goals as an institution is “inclusive excellence,” rightly so, because a college (in theory) exists to educate regardless of paying capacity to create opportunities for those who may not have access to them. Conn maintains a substantial financial aid program, providing 52% of enrolled students with aid (a total of $35 million). In addition to these costs, maintaining and expanding existing facilities is expensive.
“Fossil fuel companies are precisely the kind of companies that colleges would like to be invested in,” said Josh Stoffel, Campus Sustainability Manager. “These companies are economically very valuable; they guarantee a consistent return on investment.” Just what an institution like Conn is looking for. Conn’s endowment of $237 million is relatively small. In comparison, Amherst, a similarly sized college, has an endowment of $1.823 billion. A large research university like Stanford has an endowment of over $18 billion.
Stanford recently decided to divest from coal companies.The much smaller Hampshire College, with an endowment of $28.9 million, has also decided to do the same. It has divested from all producers of fossil fuels, deciding to invest in the future-in companies creating the next big wave of renewable energy technologies. In an article for Huffington Post, Hampshire College President Jonathan Lash summed up the dilemma for non-profit educational institutions such as Conn best, when he writes “as ‘mission driven’ (rather than ‘for profit’) institutions, colleges and universities often grapple with the question of whether to apply their values to the way that they invest as well as the way that they spend their funds, even if doing so might diminish their earnings.”
The problem with divestments is that they are hard to put into practice, explained Paul Maroni, the College’s Vice President for Finance. “The investments of our endowment are managed by fund managers,” he said “with good track records of maximizing return. These funds are very much like mutual funds and the College does not decide on its investments.”
Because the College has a small endowment, and hence relatively less to invest, it would be hard, if not outright impossible, for the College to exert pressure on these fund managers to change their investment portfolios. These fund managers who are entrusted with Conn’s endowment maximize their return on investment for a large and diverse clientele. From day to day, the fund managers may invest in fossil fuel companies like Exxon Mobil that could provide a good return, Mr. Maroni said, “just as they might in General Electric, the world’s largest producer of wind turbines.
A few years ago, the College’s president had tried, in the case of the Darfur conflict, to influence the fund managers through a letter-writing campaign which, though well received, had little impact. The College is also wary of financial commitments in the New London community that could impact the local environment. “We had a bitter experience of making losses on our investments in the 1990s with the New London Development Corporation of which the then-president was head.”
According to Mr. Maroni, the College’s focus is directed much more towards its direct impact as an institution. One important initiative in this direction has been the Sustainability Fund, which makes savings and investments through sustainability a priority for the College. The Office of Sustainability is responsible for putting conservation and a sustainable lifestyle into practice here at Conn.
As I learned from Josh Stoffel when I visited his office in Steel House, he is working with Physical Plant and other staff and administrators at the College as well as with Sustainability Fellows from the student body on the installation and expansion of motion sensor lighting and improved heating with a lower carbon footprint, which are just a few of many programs. “What makes sustainability very viable is the savings in terms of energy costs that it can bring for years into the future,” he pointed out. That in turn makes the Sustainability Fund a good long run investment, and not just from an environmental point of view.
There is no denying that Conn is attempting to make itself a more sustainable institution. However, its inability to do much beyond its institutional confines is a result of being in a world where issues related to the environment are often side-lined in favor of other supposedly more important problems. Some commentators have suggested that the fossil fuel divestment movement has grown as a reaction to the lack of action by world leaders to address and solve environmental issues. This means that those who consider climate change and other environmental issues of the utmost importance and care for the earth’s future need to organize themselves on a greater scale and make their voices heard, as we saw in the People’s Climate March in New York City last month.
While there are many on campus who are thinking and working at ways to make more of an impact, more needs to be done and on a more organized level. What the College definitely needs is for the student body to promote more events and more dialogue involving faculty, staff and the broader New London community. The message needs to go out to those who call the shots in society that more of the same platitudes will not be accepted. •
