Harvard student activists block entrance to University Hall in March 2017. Source: Boston Globe.
After years of public backlash and scrutiny due to their large investments in companies that develop fossil fuels, Harvard University officially announced that their relationship with these companies will end this year. In addition to no longer investing in these companies in the future, Harvard also promised to let their current investments expire without renewal this year. Although these investments reportedly make up less than 2 percent of their total endowment, which is over $41.9 billion, Harvard had long been subject to criticism from activists, many of whom had not attended the school. Arguably the most notorious protest came in 2019 during the Yale-Harvard football game. Protesters stormed the field at halftime, causing the game to be delayed for over an hour. The protest reached national headlines. In his official announcement of the decision on September 9th, Lawrence Bacow, the President of Harvard University, stated that climate change is “the most consequential threat facing humanity,” hopefully a sign that Harvard will continue to take climate action more seriously and try to mitigate it in more ways than just stopping their fossil fuel endeavors.
The burning of fossil fuels, most notably oil, coal, and natural gas, leads to the emission of greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide, which is the largest contributor to global warming and climate change. These fossil fuels supply over 80 percent of the world’s total energy in sectors ranging from electricity to transportation to heating, in addition to creating products such as steel and plastic. When fossil fuels are burned, the greenhouse gases released trap heat in our atmosphere and raise the global temperature. If the temperature continues to increase, it will cause a rise in sea level, the extinction of many species, and an increase in severe weather events, among a plethora of other dangers. Without extraordinary changes in the way we create energy, which right now is largely through fossil fuels, the world will be put in massive danger. Hopefully, Harvard’s decision, which had already been made by a couple of other schools such as Cambridge in the UK, will lead more schools and large institutions to stop investing in companies that utilize fossil fuels and to begin prioritizing the safety of the Earth in the future.
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