An academic group has released a report that criticizes the fossil fuel divestment movement as an astroturf effort without legitimate support.
The National Association of Scholars has released a report, “Inside Divestment,” that dismisses the effort as “an attack on freedom of inquiry and responsible social advocacy in American higher education.”
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Tracing its beginnings to Swarthmore College in 2010, NAS identifies the movement as headed by environmentalist Bill McKibben and going through a series of reinventions:
At Swarthmore in 2010 and 2011, the movement presented itself as a solidarity campaign with “frontlines” communities resisting coal extraction. Since Bill McKibben brought the campaign to national prominence, it has evolved into a moral crusade against global warming, and then an Occupy Wall Street-style revolt against privileged power-holders. The movement is now in the midst of a fourth transformation, this time into a financial advisor that foresees investment risks in coal, oil, and gas companies.
The New York Post noted that two prominent organizations behind fossil fuel divestment, 350.org and GoFossilFree.org, are controlled by McKibben, “the architect of the fossil fuel divestment movement.”
In the introduction for the report, the critique goes beyond disagreements about environmental protection:
The fossil fuel divestment movement is something to take seriously. Not because it threatens the supply of capital to energy companies. It doesn’t. Not because it threatens to bankrupt colleges. It doesn’t do that either. What this movement does do, however, is impress on a whole generation of students an attitude of grim hostility to intellectual freedom, democratic self-government, and responsible stewardship of natural resources.
When colleges divest from fossil fuels, they lose investment income, but it doesn’t do lasting damage. The same goes for the fossil fuel companies. On an economic level, a boycott or divestment campaign does little. The actions are little more than symbolic, or a signal for the university to express its concern for the environment as it uses energy from coal, oil, and natural gas sources.
There’s nothing wrong with McKibben and other environmentalists from funding environmental groups, or focusing on college activism. Instead, the NAS report cautions against illiberal tendencies it sees in the divestment movement that “trains a generation to disdain representative government, wish away the energy needs of a modern economy, and replace a college education with four years of misguided activism.” College students are concerned about conservation and the environment, but divestment as a nationwide movement hasn’t grabbed them as much.
To further a liberal atmosphere of debate, NAS gave McKibben space in the report to respond. McKibben repeated his previous claims of the value of divestment and the urgency to move toward sustainable energy practices.
