Dive Brief:
- MIT leaders announced a five-year plan Wednesday to combat climate change by working with fossil fuel companies and, notably, not divesting.
- The action plan calls for partnerships with fossil fuel companies to develop new renewable energy technologies, and it lays out a plan for MIT to limit its own consumption and energy use on campus.
- The college plans to cut campus emissions by 32% over the next 15 years and stop using fuel oil entirely by 2019, but MIT President L. Rafael Reif said the university stands a better chance of success by working with companies rather than divesting from them.
Dive Insight:
Reif presents the research partnerships with fossil fuel companies as possible only if the university remains heavily invested in their products. But distinguished professor emerita of philosophy at Oregon State University Kathleen Dean Moore has written about the false dichotomies in some arguments against divestment — in one case, the argument from Yale that its greatest impact can come from research, scholarship, and education, not divestment. Institutions, though, can certainly do both.
Arguments against divestment include its minimal impact on the fossil fuel industry and the potential financial losses it would incur on institutions.