Image credit: Cyrah Gayle
We fight for a fossil-free endowment because as University members we have direct ties to the endowment. And as members of broader communities whose land, health, and wellbeing are at threat, we do not accept that the University continues to fund climate change.
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Many of the modern environmental problems have been brushed off as things that individuals can and should fix. I’m sick of it being treated as something that only the small people can fix, or even off set, while high rollers are gambling with our futures by spending money on harmful, old fashioned investments. The future of my life, my education, and my country is not for the wealthy to gamble with. UChicago is supposed to be made up of bold and brilliant leaders, striving for innovation, but we are majorly falling behind and not only is not divesting damaging human life and the environment, it’s turning our school into a foolish laughing stock, just trying to make a quick buck. I honestly would not have applied this university if I had know about the horrid and foolish way we are throwing around our dollars.
The evidence is clear: rampant fossil fuel use is incompatible with keeping so much that we all value. My priorities include protecting the lungs of my loved ones, building a more equitable global society, preventing a climate refugee crisis, and simply keeping the places I love from burning. Professionally, as a coral reef biologist, I have seen firsthand the devastation that warming oceans wreak on sensitive animals that build the literal bedrock of the marine food chain. Every island, town, or person we can save is worth saving, so we must work to prevent every 0.1 degree of warming we can. Divestment is a moral imperative because money is the only language spoken by the corporations responsible for greenhouse gases endangering our ways of life (plus the lives of millions of other species). UChicago must use its voice. Anything less is reckless endangerment of our community.
Free inquiry, free expression, and free lives are only ever possible on a living planet. To hold true to the principles of our university, we have no choice but to divest from fossil energy.