A.J. Burdine

“The Trustees also recognize that on very rare occasions, a continued investment may be so morally reprehensible that such investment would necessitate the University’s divestment.” This is an excerpt from the Trinity University Board of Trustees’ Statement on Investment Responsibility, a response to and firm rejection of a 2022 Student Government Association (SGA) resolution calling for Trinity’s endowment to divest from fossil fuels.

As this year’s representative of the Eco Allies Divest Trinity subcommittee, the one responsible for presenting this resolution to SGA in the first place, this response from the board is particularly irritating to me. This rejection not only signifies inaction, but the continued exacerbation of a catastrophic threat to our world.

This year has been the hottest summer on record, with July being likely the hottest month in the past 120,000 years. Additionally, more than 99.9% of peer-reviewed scientific papers agreed that human activity is the primary cause of climate change as of 2021.

The effects of climate change are becoming more obvious than just increased temperatures, with devastating wildfires in Canada and Hawaii making headlines in recent months, in addition to the massive effects and casualties of the floods in Pakistan over the past year. It is undeniable that climate change is causing increasingly immense suffering and death.

Another matter of scientific consensus is that burning fossil fuels causes climate change more than any human activity, and cutting them out is an immediately necessary step to limit the worst effects of climate change. Unfortunately, fossil fuel corporations are massively powerful entities. In 2022, oil and gas companies spent $124.4 million lobbying the federal government to reduce the effectiveness of climate legislation. This was the same year the oil industry netted a record $200 billion.
It seems impossible to reach any conclusion other than that fossil fuel companies are actively and willingly making Earth uninhabitable. This, to me, means that fossil fuel corporations are palpably and indefensibly evil. In other words, I feel inclined to call them “so morally reprehensible” that an investment in such institutions would absolutely warrant divestment as fast as humanly possible.

As such, I find the Board’s statement to be a joke. It implies that divesting from fossil fuel companies would be unbecoming of an “impartial institution,” stating, “[T]he Trustees do not believe the Endowment should be used as a tool to further specific political or social positions or agendas.”

This is utterly laughable, as the insinuation that investing an obscene amount of money into fossil fuels is not a political statement in and of itself is so comically absurd that it took me over a month to get over my bewilderment to write this.

The report goes on to say how the Investment Office’s use of third-party investment managers for the endowment “can lead to investments in companies with more sustainable business models”. The report also says that Trinity thoroughly vets these investment managers, and that the investment office “may” take said investment managers’ consideration of environmental issues into account. Evidently, companies that are actively killing everyone have sustainable business models.

The Board concludes that maximizing the endowment’s long-term returns is the best way to ensure that Trinity can be the best forum possible for addressing broad issues. This would be a decent point if not for this school’s inordinate price tag already making it less accessible and effective as a forum. That is not to mention that the planet we all live on is also critically important to maintaining such a forum.

It doesn’t necessarily surprise me that a board filled with corporate executives, many of whom are involved in fossil fuels, would be so out of touch as to insinuate the survival of our species is not an important enough ethical concern to consider divestment from fossil fuels.

With that said, it is still worthwhile to call for divestment, which has been successfully done at many other schools. The pockets of the fossil fuel industry are deep, and it is well past the time for the Board to stop making them even deeper without the consent of the people whose money they are using to do so.

As the representative of Divest Trinity, you have carte blanche to email me for access to our mailing list, Discord or any information you want that I can give you. A nuanced perspective on this issue is critical, so no question you ask will offend me.

According to the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, we live in a time of unprecedented danger. On the doomsday clock, it is 90 seconds to midnight. If we wish to hold that second hand back, the time to act is now.