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Should Colleges Divest From Fossil Fuels?

Readers say the divestment cause is a worthy one. but another calls it “financial theater.” Also: Culture and vegetarianism.

Image
  Credit...Nicholas Konrad

To the Editor:

Re “Why Hasn’t Harvard Stopped Investing in Fossil Fuels?,” by Devi Lockwood (Op-Ed, nytimes.com, Jan. 29):

In 2013, responding to student and alumni demands that Harvard divest from fossil fuel companies, Drew Gilpin Faust, then the president of Harvard, favored “engagement over withdrawal.” In 2019, Lawrence Bacow, the current president, wrote that Harvard still prefers “engaging with industry” to divestment.

During those six years, global temperature and carbon dioxide emissions rose in concert, and extreme weather events increased in number and intensity. Scientists agreed that global warming is due to human activities, and the United States joined and then withdrew from the Paris climate accord.

The fundamental principle of endowment management is that future student generations should benefit to the same extent as the current generation. By investing in the very companies whose products cause dangerous global warming, Harvard violates that principle and bets that it can profit from the success of those companies.

But the more they succeed, the more humanity, its universities and its future alumni will lose.

James L. Powell
Buellton, Calif.
The writer, a former college president, is the author of the forthcoming book “The 2084 Report: An Oral History of the Great Warming.”

To the Editor:

Devi Lockwood calls for Harvard to divest from fossil fuels, contending that it would position the university as a climate change leader.

While I share Ms. Lockwood’s concerns about climate change, divestment is little more than financial theater. Even at its best, it would have no meaningful effect on global emissions. What is worse, divestment misconstrues the climate problem and distracts from the market-based solutions that can actually make a difference.

Instead of demonizing fossil fuel companies, we need economy-wide incentives that encourage all parties to do the right thing. That is why proposals like the carbon dividends plan — which would establish a price on carbon and rebate the revenue to the American people — has won sweeping support from economists, businesses and environment NGOs alike.

The plan would harness the power of the market to drive emissions reductions at scale.

Substitute symbolic posturing for a real solution? That would move Harvard — and the world — forward.

Wesley L. Donhauser
Cambridge, Mass.
The writer, a Harvard junior, is president of the Harvard Republican Club.

To the Editor:

I applaud the members of Divest Harvard and Harvard Forward. They are fighting the good fight.

Like Harvard, my own institution, Swarthmore College, where I am a freshman, has remained intransigent in the face of a large student divestment campaign.

Like Harvard, Swarthmore knows that it can divest because it has in the past, from apartheid South Africa, and because numerous institutions have remained unscathed after divesting from fossil fuels.

Like Harvard, Swarthmore claims to care about the climate crisis. It should put its money where its mouth is.

Daniel Abel Fernandez
Swarthmore, Pa.

Image
  Credit...Angie Wang

To the Editor:

Re “The Meaning of a Giant Roast Pig” (Sunday Review, Feb. 16):

In her article about vegetarianism and her meat-eating Chinese Malaysian cultural roots, Alicia P.Q. Wittmeyer deploys modernity in a self-serving fashion. In China, where I was born, animal protein was not traditionally significant in the national diet. In fact, many cultures worldwide traditionally ate far less meat than is the case today.

For people like me who have shed our meat-eating ways, going back to the largely plant-based diet of our forebears has brought only benefits.

Ms. Wittmeyer also gives short shrift to the growing global trend of reducing meat consumption so we can reduce chronic human diseases, environmental destruction and the immense suffering of animals. The availability of healthy, delicious and environmentally efficient plant-based foods is a mark of modernity that does something good for us all.

Peter J. Li
Houston
The writer is an associate professor of East Asian politics at the University of Houston-Downtown.

To the Editor:

Bullfighting, whale hunting, roast pig celebrations: All are connections to cultural traditions, and all can evolve, as humans try to cause less suffering and damage.

Science tells us that other animals share with us basic emotions and the desire to live. Alicia P.Q. Wittmeyer could inflect her Chinese Malaysian culture’s evolution with a new awareness and sense of kinship, a wide and deep connection with all sentient beings, and maintain aspects of her heritage that don’t cause harm.

My husband, my sister and I turned away from the animal products of our cultural upbringing 15 years ago, and count that change as a revelation and a blessing every day of our lives.

Deborah Elliott
Pacific Palisades, Calif.

A correction was made on 
Feb. 24, 2020

An earlier version of the first letter about demands that Harvard divest from fossil fuel companies referred incorrectly to Harvard’s investment in the industry. The figure $5.6 million cited in the earlier version, and since deleted, is the investment amount that Fossil Fuel Divest Harvard analyzed from Harvard’s disclosed funds (1 percent of the endowment as of August), not the total amount, which is not publicly available.

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A version of this article appears in print on  , Section A, Page 18 of the New York edition. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe

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