Students will vote on a referendum asking if they support UNC’s $2.1 billion endowment getting rid of its investments in the coal industry on Feb. 12. If you want to carry forward our University’s tradition of student leadership on climate justice and environmental action, you should vote yes.
While our political leaders fail to address climate change, the latest National Climate Assessment raises the terrifying prospect of the planet warming by as much as 8 degrees Fahrenheit within the next 90 years if carbon emissions keep rising.
The environmental and public health impacts of coal pollution cost the U.S. economy as much as half a trillion dollars every year. And, as New York City mayor Mike Bloomberg said after Superstorm Sandy, getting rid of coal “would make more of a difference in the amount of greenhouse gases that we spew into the air than any other 10 things put together.”
Coal isn’t just the dirtiest, most carbon-intensive fossil fuel on the planet — it’s also a declining industry and a dangerous investment. That’s why a new analysis shows divesting from the 15 major U.S. coal mining and coal-fired utility companies would have “no real impact on risk” for investment portfolios.
UNC has a rich history of student-led environmental activism. UNC students voted in 2003 to approve a $4-per-semester student fee for renewable energy — one of the first student green fees in the Southeast.
In 2007, the Campus Y committee Students Working for Environmental Action and Transformation urged UNC to adopt a policy against purchasing coal extracted through mountaintop removal coal mining. In 2010, a student campaign successfully pushed Chancellor Holden Thorp to commit to end coal use by 2020 at UNC’s on-campus power plant.
Divestment was a successful tactic once before. In the 1980s students campaigned for years (and even engaged in civil disobedience) to get UNC’s endowment to divest from the apartheid regime in South Africa.
Next Tuesday’s coal divestment referendum isn’t binding, but it can send a clear message from students: We don’t want our education to be subsidized by investments that wreck the climate.
Join the Sierra Student Coalition, the Campus Y and more than 200 other divestment campaigns at colleges across the country committed to action on climate change by voting yes to divest.
