Finally, someone is saying what should already be obvious: The fossil-fuel-divestment “movement” sweeping college campuses is really just Big Green astroturf.
Last week, the New York-based National Association of Scholars released a damning new report on the founding, funding and motivations of the divestment movement. The report comes during the movement’s so-called “escalation season” in advance of the UN climate talks in Paris next month.
Divestment is the brainchild of radical environmentalist Bill McKibben and hedge-fund billionaire turned climate crusader Tom Steyer. On its face, the goal is to get college students to pressure their universities to sell off any holdings in the natural gas, oil and coal industries.
In reality, the divestment movement serves the political and financial interests of its founders. According to NAS President Peter Wood, while activists claim to be “organic” and “student-led,” they are actually “a nationally orchestrated campaign with top-down directives.”
Those directives come from McKibben, described as “the architect of the fossil-fuel-divestment movement,” and his group, 350.org. While 350.org claims “each campaign is independently run,” in reality “Fossil Free is a project of 350.org” and McKibben’s group calls the shots.
The best example of McKibben’s top-down control of divestment came this year, when 350.org organized “Global Divestment Day.” 350.org picked the date (Valentine’s Day), dictated the messaging (“break up with fossil fuels”) and claimed responsibility for organizing 450 events in 60 countries. In fact, at the end of 2014, 350.org bragged that “hundreds of local divestment campaigns have been launched on the GoFossilFree.org website,” which is run by 350.org.
While students are the public face of 350.org, McKibben’s group is bankrolled by a variety of pressure groups and moneyed interests, including billionaire investor Tom Steyer.
Steyer made his fortune at Farallon Capital Management, which held lucrative positions in overseas coal projects. In 2012, Steyer went on a hike with McKibben and soon after converted to the Church of Climate Change.
McKibben didn’t just get Steyer to repent — but also to tithe. Steyer’s foundation, TomKat Charitable Trust, has funneled money to 350.org since 2012, according to financial disclosures. Last year, a feature story in Institutional Investor detailed how “Bill McKibben and Tom Steyer are helping to assemble an army of students and activists to take on the investment establishment over climate change.”
Since his “road to Damascus” moment three years ago, Steyer has developed a series of non-profit ventures that serve his for-profit ventures. His super PAC, NextGen Climate Action, is dedicated to eliminating fossil fuels and subsidizing “green” energy. Meanwhile, one of his other charities is tied to an investment firm, Kilowatt Financial LLC, that specializes in, predictably, “green” energy financing.
They’re playing the long game. And a dangerous one. This year, a report found that divesting from fossil fuels would shrink university endowments by hundreds of millions of dollars. Had universities divested in 1995, the report found, Harvard would have lost $108 million, Yale $51 million, MIT $18 million, Columbia $14 million and NYU $4 million.
It isn’t clear how many student activists realize their leaders are trying to provoke them to hate affordable energy for poor people. Or that they were recruited to advance the political and financial interests of a hedge-fund billionaire. Or that the policies they advocate harm their fellow students, especially the least fortunate among them.
What is clear is that we can’t afford to dismiss divestment as youthful naiveté. It’s much more sinister.
Divestment is part of a coordinated, long-term strategy to eliminate affordable energy, so it’s no coincidence that activists are “escalating” their efforts as President Obama travels to Paris to strike a climate deal.
Yet the ultimate goal of environmental pressure groups isn’t to address climate change. It’s to use the tools of government for the benefit of a few at the expense of many. Maybe, someday, more young people will realize they’ve been speaking truth to the wrong power.
Thomas Pyle is president of the American Energy Alliance.