“Where is Chancellor Folt?” chanted counter-protesters at Sunday’s neo-Confederate rally. Student activists of many causes often wonder the same thing. There is one campaign she is particularly silent about. Where does Chancellor Carol Folt stand on coal divestment? We haven’t a clue.
The very reasonable demands of the Sierra Student Coalition are as follows: divestment from the 15 dirtiest coal companies from the part of UNC’s endowment that the UNC Management Company has direct control of. Our peers at both the University of Maine and University of California systems have both made similar choices.
The general arguments against fossil fuel divestment, according to an article in the Chronicle of Higher Education by philosophy professor emerita Kathleen Dean Moore of Oregon State University, fall into four fallacies.
One Moore points out is the false dichotomy, which assumes that a university can choose to fight climate change through its research mission but cannot divest because it will not matter as much.
UNC’s experience tells us otherwise. This university creates research opportunities for students in environmental science and city planning that incorporate methods to mitigate or adapt to climate change. The University even began a push to increase its renewable energy by working with the Renewable Energy Special Projects Committee to install 64 solar panels on the roof of the Student Union.
These benevolent pursuits do nothing in opposition to divestment from coal and by no means make up for the fact that the endowment may contain investments in companies that create environmental disasters.
The chancellor certainly has areas of focus and commitment to the University: a passion for research and innovation that make the University even more globally competitive. But her silence on the issue of divestment makes us nostalgic for the leadership styles of past chancellors.
In 2010, then-Chancellor Holden Thorp took a stand on the University’s pollution footprint. That May, he announced the campus cogeneration plant on Cameron Avenue would cease burning coal by 2020. He did so after convening a 10-member task force consisting of students, faculty and community members to recommend ways to reduce UNC’s carbon footprint.
Folt needs no new task force. A capstone project authored by students who extensively researched coal divestment already recommended that the University should divest.
