Invest in the Future

On Nov. 12, Columbia University will be given an opportunity to make history. At the Columbia University Advisory Committee on Socially Responsible Investing community hearing, the committee can decide to recommend that the University divest its holdings in two of the largest corporations in the oil industry, ChevronTexaco and ExxonMobil, and instead invest in the construction of an extensive facility for the study of alternative energy production and storage in the potential Manhattanville campus.

Why divest? Because Columbia should not sponsor the destruction wrought by ChevronTexaco and ExxonMobil, nor have a hand in the continued global dependency on oil. Not only do these two uber-corporations ransack the environment and lay waste to swaths of land in their quest for oil wells, but, as Oilwatch (a grassroots network that monitors the activities of oil companies in tropical countries) points out in its position paper on oil and ecological debt, "There is a proven relationship between the dependence of a country on oil production and their subsequent development. The history of the oil countries of the Third World has been to pass from crisis to crisis until dependent[,] decapitalized, and in many cases violent economic models, take shape [sic]."

The Middle East is a case in point, and so are Nigeria, South Africa, Cameroon, Gabon, Thailand, Sri Lanka, East Timor, Mexico, Guatemala, Peru, Colombia, and Brazil, among others. The legal battle now being waged in Ecuadorian courts by the Cofan Indians against ChevronTexaco over the destruction of their ecosystem is yet another reminder of Big Oil's appetite for destruction.

To its credit, the Advisory Committee has recognized that something needs to be done. Last year in the 2002-2003 annual report, the Advisory Committee reported that it saw the value in "encouraging companies to develop strategies to diversify from dependence on carbon and fossil fuels and of raising the standards for diversification set by most of the companies in the oil industry." Unfortunately, the suggestions stemming from this realization were promptly rejected by the Trustee Subcommittee on Shareholder Responsibility.

Giving the Trustee Subcommittee the benefit of the doubt, it could be that the Trustees do not realize the true cost of our investments. What many people do not realize is that oil and oil production are much more expensive than we would like to think. As Vijay Vaitheeswaran, energy correspondent for The Economist and author of the recently published Power to the People said at a Columbia Energy Center-sponsored talk last week, "We don't pay the real costs for oil--the price we pay does not reflect the costs of hurting the environment, global warming, or of having the U.S. Army stabilize the Middle East." It is the hidden economic costs--those not reflected in the profit margins of oil companies--that the two committees should keep in mind when reviewing the profits Columbia receives from its investment, since most of these costs will continue to accrue in a debt that will have to be paid by our children and our children's children.

But even if the Trustee Subcommittee would accept the recommendations of the Advisory Committee and pressure oil companies to tighten up their regulations, "Regulations alone will not stabilize atmospheric carbon dioxide levels and curb global warming," writes Jim Kloeppel, physical sciences editor of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign News Bureau. Instead of tightened regulations, continues Kloeppel, "What's needed is the further development of alternative energy technologies that permit worldwide economic development while simultaneously stabilizing carbon dioxide levels and controlling climate change."

Which brings us to what should be done with the $1,731,800 Columbia has invested in ChevronTexaco and the $2,061,234 invested in ExxonMobil: Invest it in the Manhattanville campus. This decision could, as the saying goes, kill two birds with one stone. The University would work to repair the damage done to the environment while giving added justification to the expansion. It would be much easier to support Columbia's expansion if it meant also supporting, say, the largest alternative energy laboratory in the Northeast.

The University could begin by pledging itself to a program of energy self-sufficiency--drawing energy from the Hudson River, the infamous Riverside winds, and the occasional sunlight--and move on to attract leading alternative energy researchers to advanced laboratories on our potential campus, making Manhattan once again the global center of alternative energy study. Only this time, the energy won't go to building bombs.
We are living in pivotal times, as humankind comes within reach of developing technologies to free itself from energy dependency, and these times call for heroic measures. As the leading proponent of expansion, President Lee Bollinger should seize this opportunity to infuse new purpose into the University by dedicating it to the search for alternative energy production and storage. By leading the fight against energy dependency, the Advisory Committee on Socially Responsible Investment, the Trustee Subcommittee on Shareholder Responsibility, and President Bollinger can, in the words of Bollinger's own inaugural address, "make Columbia a university that the future will take pride in and draw inspiration from just as we do today."