Bishop Hill Humanitarianism versus environmentalism
May 12, 2015 Climate: WG3 Greens Edinburgh University has decided that it will shun the trend among its fellows and refuse to divest its pension fund from the fossil fuelled part of the energy industry. Instead it will require companies in which it invests to report on their emissions.
Companies will be required to report on their emissions and benchmark them according to best performance in their sector.
In addition, the University will focus specifically on companies involved in the extraction of the highest carbon-emitting fossil fuels: coal and tar sands.
The University will withdraw from investment in these companies if: realistic alternative sources of energy are available and the companies involved are not investing in technologies that help address the effects of carbon emissions and climate change.
There is an interesting snippet at the end of the press release that reveals what swayed the top brass's thinking on this knotty question:
The [Fossil Fuels Review Group] noted in particular that many developing countries are still dependent on fossil fuels for the provision of heating, clean water and refrigeration. An abrupt shift away from fossil fuel use would impact on the well-being of some of the world’s poorest communities.
Naturally the green fraternity is revolted by this wanton display of humanitarianism:
Let's hope this meme spreads.
Reader Comments (24)
Wait for the bullying to begin!
I wait with interest for all these academics to realise that they exhale the evil carbon dioxide thus contributing personally to the demise of our planet. What will they do about it? Will we see protests?
May I suggest personal carbon sequestration kits which involve exhaling into buckets of slaked lime. A little bit inconvenient but think of saving the planet!
The ultimate answer is for all greens and environmentalists to ensure that they do not produce future generations, thus divesting in the future of mankind containing their genetic characteristics. Now, that will really benefit the planet.
Em ..but UK Universities are businesses* ..there are risks/gains in shunning other businesses
* mostly they are an ugly mafia preying on the dreams of naive foreign students and their parents money
Sanctimony! sanctimony! all is sanctimony!
Academia, stuck in a nether world, a Cultural Marxist limbo where perceived populist idiocy dictates and common sense has been rubbed out by the intolerant and the great unwashed.
May I recommend to any who haven't been following the Guardian comedy show on divestment.
http://www.theguardian.com/environment/series/the-biggest-story-in-the-world
And if you can't hear what they're saying for laughing, try Alex Cull's excellent transcripts. I suspect that site will be rich pickings for future researchers trying to understand mass hysteria and/or failed advocacy.
https://sites.google.com/site/mytranscriptbox/home
The best part of alll is the admission that they've embarked on a share divestment drive because their attempts to get people to stop using fossil fuels was too haaaard. Even for themselves.
And the Uni is heated by exactly what. Not the warmest part of the world is it!
Their nose in other the parts of the world and businesses is not required I would think
Intelligent life found in Edinburgh University.
Green blob carpet and sturation bombing by Twitter and Facebook has started immediately, as such intelligence can not be tolerated.
Carpet/saturation bombing did not work in Vietnam, and Green Luvvies have learnt nothing useful since
It looks likely to me that some of the clothing worn by the protesting students was derived from oil.
Looks like a scene from Trainspotting.
Is it the green diet that cause some of them to wear gas masks? Or is natural gas production what these students do best?
They certainly look tired out by all the practical demonstrations of indoctrination they have been receiving.
Next academic year, they will be indoctrinated on impractical demonstrations, before graduating, and taking on society, by all means they have learnt.
Whilst I approve of the university's decision, I find their words, "Companies will be required to report on their emissions..." a trifle arrogant. I'm sure that fossil fuel companies can happily exist without shareholders like that.
Nice to see the extremists reveal themselves on Twitter. Well done to Edinburgh uni for behaving like an adult and standing up to the petulant children. We need to see more of this kind of behaviour to get some rationality back into issues such as this.
Abc, good to see that Richard Dixon on TwitFace is threatening to hand back his PhD. Just shows what a waste of time and money it was, for all concerned.
We don't need no edukayshun, we don't need no thought control.
Golf:
That sabre he's rattling is a plastic toy one. I don't think there is an imminent PhD divestment campaign on the cards...
The sort of pompous arse who would threaten to hand back his PhD is precisely the sort of pompous arse who would never relinquish the title 'Dr'. There is nothing wrong in using the title one has earnt, but there are those who think it alone defines who they are and sets them above others.
If one did hand one's PhD back over an entirely unrelated matter, it would suggest a lack of openness and respect for free thought that should be an anathema in a university. In the spirit of research represented by a PhD, Dixon should engage the university in debate and explain why he believes his ideological position trumps the well-being of the world's poorest.
@Ex-expat Colin
They use gas burning Combined Heat and Power plants to provide 80% of the energy needs on campus.
http://www.ed.ac.uk/polopoly_fs/1.134640!/fileManager/UoE%20CHP-DH%20Case%20Study.docx
Other divestment campaigns aimed at the defence and alcohol industries have been given short shrift by the university in the past.
The invention of the Green Audit has proved to be a marvellous tool in the hands of those who wish to focus on the environmental 'costs' of human activities. It would be interesting to develop a Humanitarian Audit, to assess industrial practises, not to mention investment strategies like fossil fuel divestment, in terms of their humanitarian consequences. Unlike the Green Audit, the humanitarian cost of, for example, pressurising South Africa to abstain from coal-based infrastructure development, would be assessible directly in terms of human lives lost or blighted. These costs could be allocated, moreover, in the immediate future, without involving any dubious translation through an intermediate metric of atmospheric CO2 concentrations. Perhaps Oxfam, or one of the other organisations now so closely linked to the green cause, could amend their damaged reputation by promoting the development of such a practise?
So who exactly decided to invest in these companies in the first place?
"Companies will be required to report on their emissions and benchmark them according to best performance in their sector." I doubt that any major company would provide this to one investor, unless it was already available. I am sure that there are more than enough new investors to replace any divestors.
I've just read the chapter in Tom Sowell's Basic Economics that talks about peak oil. Basically the only peak is in what reserves are present due to current extraction which is only driven by how much it costs to extract it. Bottom line: there's way more oil than we think. Interestingly oil companies already keep much "in the ground" in current drill sites as it's not economically viable to extract it all at the moment.
There's a good point about how in recent years Canadian oil sands were only included on the World Reserve tally whereas beforehand extraction was too expensive and hence they weren't counted.
So with that in mind what kind of eejit says "Keep it in the ground"?
"So who exactly decided to invest in these companies in the first place?"
Obviously, it must have been a shrewd bod' [notice, I did nae say Don] - someone who knew what he was doing, otherwise presently there would be nothing to be divested thereof. The guy who made those investments............it would evidently preclude any of the financially illiterate clowns currently lolling around Edinburgh campus.
May 12, 2015 at 1:46 PM | TinyCO2 wrote:
I heartily second this motion. And (while there is no transcript, yet ... Alex, maybe you'd like to add it to your to do list?!) ...
Not sure what his mode of transportation might have been; but on-his-way-to-bigger-'n-better-things-galore, Rusbridger was recently in New York. While he was on this side of the pond, he was reverently interviewed by Canada's equivalent partner in taxpayer-funded Green Blob propaganda pushing: In this instance Rusbridger was interviewed the CBC's Gillian Findlay, in her role as "guest host" on their Sunday Morning radio program.
Amazingly, Rusbridger was somewhat more articulate than he was heard to be on your side of the pond. But it would not surprise me in the least to learn (not that I ever shall, I suspect!) that his "bad bits" had been dutifully edited out of this almost 27 minute interview.
"...if realistic alternative sources of energy are available..."
Where their definition of "realistic" is probably "only exist because of gigantic government subsidies"?
Check out the recent paper by the Woods Hole Research Centre:
"Dr. Houghton and colleagues conclude that the greater certainty in atmospheric carbon measurements has led to an increased certainty in the calculated rate of carbon uptake by land and oceans. The scientists are confident that the rates have so far increased in proportion to emissions. Monitoring that uptake year by year is critical for understanding the carbon cycle and for knowing how to deal with it."
Link to abstract:
http://www.biogeosciences.net/12/2565/2015/bg-12-2565-2015.html
Could be an explanation for the "Pause"?