This article comes from the Global Desk, a collaboration between The Gazelle, WSN and On Century Avenue. Read more by searching ‘global.’ Climate change is very real, and the administration of NYU knows this. Their Climate Action Plan is one of the most ambitious in the world, with an end goal of carbon neutrality by 2040. Their Sustainability Office has sparked dozens of projects in order to make the University more environmentally friendly, and has convinced thousands of community members to help save the planet by recycling, using CFL bulbs, and taking the stairs instead of the elevator. These efforts are not nearly enough. NYU and its students produced a minuscule amount of the 36.1 carbon-equivalent gigatons of greenhouse gases generated globally in 2013, and as global emissions rates continue to rise year to year, NYU’s individual carbon footprint will become increasingly insignificant. Simply put, individual action will not solve the climate crisis. What we need is large-scale, top-down energy reform that puts the responsibility for the damaging and dangerous effects of fossil fuel consumption exactly where it belongs—on the fossil fuel industry. A carbon tax and an end to subsidies for coal, oil and natural gas companies are long overdue, and the price of refusing to implement them is getting higher by the day. Good-faith agreements such as the one recently reached between the US and China are a step in the right direction, but meaningful, and, more importantly, binding political action is crucial if we are going to keep the rise in average global temperature below two degrees celsius, the internationally-agreed upon threshold for maintaining a livable climate. If NYU really is a university in the public service, then its administration have a duty to do everything they can in order to prevent that threshold from being breached. So when direct, individual action is not enough, then they must employ indirect measures. By divesting its endowment from the top 200 publicly-traded coal, oil and natural gas companies in the United States, NYU can leverage its social and political capital to send a powerful message: That reliance on fossil fuels is both immoral and unsustainable. The tactic of divestment, most prominently in anti-tobacco and anti-Apartheid campaigns, has been shown to lead to greater public disapproval of the industry being divested from and, eventually, to political action against it. Indirect action, via the largely symbolic act of removing university endowment funds from destructive and morally bankrupt industries, can lend a powerful hand to already-existing efforts to combat them. Fossil fuel divestment, then, is not the final solution to the climate crisis--it is a logical continuation of any climate change prevention/mitigation plan and a foundation for new, grander plans. It is an effort to begin removing the ties that we all have to the world’s largest and most ubiquitous industry, which is an especially necessary step at a university with an entire campus funded by a nation that was put on the map thanks to oil. Indeed, NYU is in many ways the ideal candidate for divestment: it, like every virtually every other institution on Earth, has benefitted from the fossil fuel industry, but now must acknowledge that the time has come to move toward a more sustainable future. (After all, the UAE itself has begun to do so.) NYU has divested twice before, once from companies profiting from exploitative laws under South African Apartheid and once, just a few years ago, from companies taking advantage of the chaos in Sudan. The need to do so again has never been clearer. Climate change threatens us all and so I invite all of those who care about the future of the planet and who see the inherent contradiction between publicly opposing climate change and profiting off of the industry responsible for causing it to join me in supporting NYU Divest: Go Fossil Free. And although the meetings will be taking place in NYU New York, climate change is still a global issue and NYU is the Global Network University. Students at every global site have something to lose if this crisis is not addressed, and, equally importantly, they have a say in the way this university is run. Just as NYU divesting would help create a serious national and international discourse on climate change, we too can all help create a university-wide discourse on divestment. Do your research, sign NYU Divest’s petition, and spread the word on your campus, wherever it is. This article was written by Daniel Floyd. Send an email to [email protected] to get in touch. Photo Credit: NYU Divest