April 2, 2014

ON MARCH 26, the student government at the University of Wisconsin-Madison (UW-Madison) voted overwhelmingly to call for the university's endowment to be divested from the top 200 fossil fuel companies.

After a lengthy debate, the Associated Students of Madison (ASM) voted 18-6 to support the resolution put forward by Fossil Free UW, a coalition of organizations including Climate Action 350, the International Socialist Organization, the Teaching Assistants' Association and others. As ASM Rep. Andy Stoiber put it, "This resolution says that the students of this university do not support gambling on planet Earth's resources."

The successful passage of the resolution reflects the growing awareness of a simple, if sobering, fact: The only way to avert climate disaster is to begin making systemic changes in the way we utilize Earth's resources. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has concluded that 80 percent of the world's known oil, gas and coal reserves must stay in the ground to avoid warming by 2 degrees Celsius--the tipping point, according to scientists, at which catastrophic global climate change can no longer be avoided.

Activists at a University of Wisconsin rally for fossil fuel divestment

The Fossil Free UW Coalition is a part of a broader divestment movement that has reached more than 380 colleges and universities internationally, according to the Fossil Free website.

The movement has been characterized by an Oxford University study as "the fastest growing divestment movement in history." Since the launch of the fossil fuel divestment campaign in late 2012, 10 colleges, 23 cities, two counties, 23 religious institutions, 19 foundations, and several other institutions have committed to some form of divestment from fossil fuel companies.

The strength of this movement shows the speed at which students are drawing more radical conclusions about the need for an immediate overhaul in the way society meets its energy needs. The campaign clearly resonates with the vast majority of students. In fact, student referendums on fossil fuel divestment at Harvard, Yale, Tufts, and the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign passed with 72 percent, 83 percent, 74 percent and 86 percent support respectively.

THE THREAT of global climate devastation due to catastrophic warming of the planet is unparalleled. Several studies estimate that by 2050, there may be as many as 200 million environmental refugees displaced from their countries by rising sea levels, droughts, wildfires, floods, hurricanes and other extreme weather phenomena linked to climate change--disproportionately affecting the poor and people of color.

The divestment movement aims to draw attention to the dangers of climate change while simultaneously exposing fossil fuel companies As ASM Chair David Vines said, "The goal [of divestment] is to spark a wider conversation and a wider movement." Students like Vines are coming to the conclusion that the profitability of fossil fuel companies runs contradictory to our ability to survive as a human race.

As with the boycott, divestment and sanctions campaign against Israeli apartheid, the fossil fuel divestment campaigns draw inspiration from the successful solidarity struggles with Black South Africans fighting apartheid during the 1970s and 1980s.

At UW-Madison, the anti-apartheid divestment campaign began in 1969 with the formation of a student group, first convened symbolically one day after the nine-year anniversary of the Sharpeville massacre. It took nine more years of organizing, culminating in May 1977, when 12 students occupied the chancellor's office demanding divestment. The next year, UW-Madison became the second university in the country to divest from South African apartheid.

This tradition of solidarity and struggle has been continued by other activists, including the Student Labor Action Coalition (SLAC), which has pressured the university to uphold fair labor standards for workers.

The opposition to fossil fuel divestment at UW charges that the campaign is "politically divisive." Citing a "fledgling bipartisan coalition" that has come together to talk about a carbon tax, some faculty Senate members claim the divestment movement makes it more difficult to create a broad consensus for environmental reforms.

But the idea that we need bipartisan consensus including both the Republican and Democratic Parties in order to do something about climate change will only set the movement backwards. The current presidential administration and Congress have failed completely to enact meaningful reforms on environmental issues. In Wisconsin, not only has legislation around climate issues been stagnant, but the current legislature has actively worked to dismantle mining safeguards--threatening indigenous communities like the Bad River Tribe in the process.

There are many oppressive social systems--slavery, Jim Crow segregation, denying women the right to vote, apartheid and others--that are universally (or almost universally) acknowledged to be evil today, but in their day, the struggle to defeat them was deemed "politically divisive" and going "too far too fast." Instead, their opponents were told to look toward making change in small, incremental steps, so as not to upset those who maintain power.

But that's not how any of these systems of oppression were toppled. And with climate change, it isn't feasible to wait any longer before we make radical changes to the way energy is produced. If the "divisive politics" of yesterday are to become the moral standards of tomorrow, divestment must be a part of the solution to climate devastation.

BY MAKING these connections between past struggles and those we fight today--as well as between struggles against different forms of oppression, exploitation and environmental destruction today--we put ourselves in a better position to win.

Within the environmental justice movement, we should draw the connections between the fight for a sustainable future and the fight for racial, gender and economic equality. The same corporations responsible for runaway climate change fill up segregated, poor neighborhoods with toxic waste and restrict the kinds of job opportunities that are available to poor and working class people. Not only must we draw out these connections, but we must actively put these struggles at the center of the broader movement.

Practically, this means that the movement to divest from fossil fuels should stand in solidarity with the global BDS campaign against Israel--a movement which also draws inspiration from the struggle against apartheid in South Africa. Additionally, the divestment movement must stand against U.S. imperialist intervention in the Middle East--which often doubles as a profitable venture for capitalists who extract and exploit natural resources, including fossil fuels--and around the world.

It also means fighting the privatization of higher education, which makes the possibility of divestment from fossil fuels an even greater challenge.

At the University of Wisconsin, one of the largest public universities in the country, the endowment is controlled by the UW Foundation, a private organization that has no direct accountability to students, faculty or even administrators. The movement to divest from fossil fuels must also demand transparency and accountability from university administration and endowment funds.

It's clear that the struggle to divest from fossil fuels won't be won overnight, nor is it the ultimate solution to climate change. However, as one piece of a broader environmental justice movement, it has the ability to draw students and faculty into the struggle against climate change.

The divestment struggle is connected to the wider transformation we need in our entire economic system to save the planet. The goal of ecosocialists is to make these small victories a step toward abolishing the profit motive for climate change entirely.

Co-published at System Change Not Climate Change.