I and many other students and staff at King’s College London do all we can to cut down our carbon footprints. We cycle in all weather, recycle neurotically, shop at farmers’ markets, have successfully lobbied our housemates to switch to renewable energy providers, and we can’t think of a dish that is complete without lentils. We are far from perfect, but continue to try to improve.

At the same time, until recently I owned shares in some of the most polluting companies in the world. My discovery of the fossil fuel divestment campaign made it clear that my cognitive dissonance on this issue was far from an isolated case. The realisation that your individual efforts to be a greener citizen have little impact on a global problem invites apathy and cynicism. Inspired by the campaign, I divested my shares and put the profit into a campaign to resolve the same dissonance that exists in our university.

For a university energetically committed to enhancing its standing academically this neglect of ethical issues is stark

King’s, to its credit, has recently focused more heavily on its campus sustainability, hiring an excellent team that is focused on cutting down the university’s carbon footprint. At the same time, however, it invests more than £8m in companies that are the biggest drivers of climate change. If our university is truly committed to sustainability and educating students to help shape the future, then surely it should be investing in a way that positively impacts on that future.

Our campaign for King’s to divest from fossil fuel companies has garnered widespread support among students and staff: in part because such a simple and effective strategy provides an antidote to futility. This widespread sense of despair arises from the disheartening chasm between climate science and political action, which cannot be bridged alone by switching off lights.

We expected that our campaign, with the support it has received, would be addressed earnestly by the administration. Instead we were surprised at the near absence of response, and the rather peculiar form it took when it came.

The university administration sent vice-principal Chris Mottershead, who spent 30 years of his career at BP, to deal with our campaign. For part of that time he was their global adviser on energy security and climate change, and now chairs the government’s transport energy task force.

Since handing in our petition six months ago, Mottershead has been keen to engage us in discussions on the role of fossil fuel companies, and has even debated with us in a public forum. His view is that society needs to forge closer relationships with fossil fuel companies, and our campaign risks alienating them. Meanwhile, our university administration has taken no tangible steps to consider the prospect of fossil fuel divestment.

The single formal response we have received consisted of a vague statement of investment principles, indicating that the university is happy to invest in companies “as long as they are open about any harm they might do, and that they are taking action to minimise this harm”, a statement broad enough to mean nothing.

Our interaction with the administration seems to point to a more fundamental issue: that of a democratic deficit within the university. At one point we were told that we “were talking into a void”, given the lack of formal structure concerning ethical investment. It is surely this absence of attention, rather than any malicious intent, that explains an ethical investment policy sorely out of date (referring only to “direct” investments, of which the university has none) and the continued investment in tobacco companies by a renowned medical research institution.

Desmond Tutu intervenes over King's College London's refusal to divest Read more

For a university energetically committed to enhancing its standing academically, this neglect of ethical issues is stark. There is no opportunity for students or staff to have an input on such decisions. This issue has motivated the recent occupation of King’s by students feeling disenfranchised. The occupiers’ demands includes a request for the university to conduct a review of fossil fuel divestment, as many other universities have.

We feel at this late hour that the softly softly approach is indistinguishable from complacency. Indeed this stance reflects that of the fossil fuel companies themselves and, in the context of increasingly volatile weather, seems certain to end in disaster.

We hope that with growing interest in the fossil-free campaign around the world, and intervention by a global symbol of justice in the form of Archbishop Desmond Tutu, our administration takes the issue of fossil fuel divestment seriously and lives up to its aspirations to be a “force for good”.