Last month, more than 500 leading academics, climate experts and university affiliates called for an end to the fossil fuel industry funding university climate research. The reason: Faced with the climate crisis, the academic community must play a leading role in developing a renewable-energy future. Brokering financial partnerships with polluters prevents universities from fulfilling that goal and conducting conflict-free research.
The movement to get large institutions to divest from fossil fuel companies has gained enormous steam. Harvard (the world’s richest university), major philanthropic organization the Ford Foundation and the European Union’s biggest pension fund, ABP, all made divestment commitments since last fall. Universities in the U.S. and the United Kingdom should build on that momentum and once again take a firm stand against oil and gas companies, which are blocking the transition to clean energy to protect their profits.
To do so, the schools should ban funding from the fossil fuel industry for research in areas where it has a clear financial stake and history of spreading misinformation: climate change as well as environmental and energy science and policy.
