Guest skewering by David Middleton
Yale’s Endowment Won’t Divest from Fossil Fuels. Here’s Why That’s Wrong.
JENNIFER STOCK & GEREMY SCHULICK MARCH 8, 2019
Two climate activists and Yale alumni confront the arguments of Yale’s chief investment officer, arguing that he must summon the moral clarity to end support for fossil fuel companies.At my 15th Yale reunion, my husband Geremy and I attended a talk by the university’s chief investment officer, David Swensen. In the largest lecture room of Linsly-Chittenden Hall, stained-glass angels representing music, science, religion, and art beamed on Yale’s “eight-billion-dollar man” as he ascended the podium. Clad in a white suit blazoned with broad blue stripes, a Yale man’s outfit circa 1920, Swensen launched into a jaunty lecture about the Yale Model, his signature approach to endowment investing, which has yielded unparalleled 13 percent returns per annum over the past 30 years for the $29.4 billion endowment.
The audience was made up of alumni working in finance, engaged in animated side-chatter about hedge funds. My husband and I, though, are climate activists, and we were there because we want Yale’s endowment, the second-largest in the world, to divest fully from its fossil fuel holdings. If it did, it would join cities like New York and Berlin, institutions like the World Bank and the American Medical Association, and schools like Queens College, Cambridge, and Middlebury College. We wanted to understand the perspective of a renowned investor, one whose actions and attitudes are closely watched and often mirrored in the broader world of institutional investing, on taking this important symbolic action.[…]
At a lecture at Clare College, Cambridge, Swensen stated that modern society depends on fossil fuels, and “if we stopped producing fossil fuels today, we would all die … the real problem is the consumption of fossil fuels, and every one of us in the room is a consumer. And I guess it’s a little harder to look in the mirror and say I’m part of the problem.” Swensen’s statement is a gibe at unrealistic activists. He seems to be saying, climate change is a threat, but are you really not going to board your next flight to Miami?
At its essence, divestment is a symbolic, culturally punitive act. Yale’s divestment would not subtract from the supply of fossil fuels available to burn.[…]
The American Prospect(s)… (Are dim if these climate activists are typical of the results of Ivy League education – DHM)
Honestly… Is there any logical difference between this:
“At its essence, divestment is a symbolic, culturally punitive act.”
–Yale-educated climate activists Jennifer Stock and Geremy Schulick, 2019.
And this?
Otter: Bluto’s right. Psychotic, but absolutely right. We gotta take these bastards. Now, we could fight ’em with conventional weapons. That could take years and cost millions of lives. Oh no. No, in this case, I think we have to go all out. I think that this situation absolutely requires a really futile and stupid gesture be done on somebody’s part.
ΔΤΧ Rush Chairman Eric “Otter” Stratton and future US Senator John “Bluto” Blutarski,, Faber College, 1962.
Bluto: And we’re just the guys to do it.
Is it just me… Or does it strike you as odd that college graduates, 15 years after graduating, would even care how their alma mater was investing its money? Shouldn’t they have jobs by now? Clearly in 1977, Otter, Boon, Pinto, Flounder, Bluto and D-Day weren’t bugging Faber College about its endowment. I went to college in the same city as the Yale climate activists (different school), graduating in 1980. I haven’t even been back to my campus since 1988 or 1989 – and then it was just to visit my professors. At the time of my 15th reunion (assuming Southern Connecticut Class of 1980 even had a 15th reunion) in 1995, I was busy drilling wells, finding oil & gas, in the Gulf of Mexico. I’m still busy doing that today. I’m sure that Southern Connecticut is fully invested, at least philosophically, in Greentardia. Do I care? No. I don’t give a rat’s @$$. I have work to do.
If every university endowment fund divested from fossil fuels, it would have this much impact on our magnificent “Climate Wrecking Industry”…
And… Yes… From the moment I went to see Animal House at a New Haven movie theater in 1978, it has been one of my favorite movies. I always viewed it as a sort of instructional film for campus conduct… 😉
David Middleton is a 1980 graduate of Southern Connecticut State University (College back then). He has been a proud member of the Climate Wrecking Industry since 1981, a member of the Society of Exploration Geophysicists since 1981 and American Association of Petroleum Geologists since 2004.
PS… How about that Trump-Russia Nothing Burger! MAGA!!!
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These people probably think that “1,033 institutions and 58,000 individuals have divested or will divest from fossil fuel companies,” is actually meaningful. Typical of innumerate idiots, they appear to be impressed with supposedly big numbers. They are not big numbers in scale.
Exxon alone has over 4.25 BILLION shares outstanding, down from around 6 BILLION about a dozen years ago, from buybacks. Those shares are owned by over 2,600 institutions, down from, well, about 2,600 institutions. That’s ExxonMobil alone, not including other “fossil fuel companies” like Chevron, Conoco Phillips, Royal Dutch Shell, and BP. Who knows who owns Brazil’s Petrobas, Rosneft, Lukoil and Gazprom in Russia, and about a dozen more in China and the ROW, but the Yalies and their “divest” idiots will have zero effect on any of them.
These are not “fossil fuel” companies, they are energy companies, and the world’s need for more energy is not going to stop any time soon. Their shares are desirable to have.
ExxonMobil is in nearly every Top 10 list of companies to own in your retirement portfolio. Buy it (regularly if you can), reinvest dividends, retire comfortably. That’s great advice for regular folks. Yalie writers and scientifically illiterate climate warriors, not so much.
I think the origin of the “futile gesture” joke may actually have been the ‘Aftermyth of War’ sketch in Beyond the Fringe which I saw in London in 1961! See httpsi://youtu.be/Y5YW4qKOAVM
Apologies, for some reason the link is corrupt. Just search “Beyond the Fringe Aftermyth of War” for some very funny 1961 British Footlights humour.
Isn’t it a remarkable coincidence that people always find the ‘moral action’ when it suits their political beliefs?
Ed, I just noticed your comment, addressed to me, here:
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2019/03/15/did-trump-appoint-jack-the-ripper-as-guardian-of-a-girls-school/#comment-2656675
…as well as your comments immediately before and after that one.
(I would reply there, but it is too late — comments are closed on that article.)
Please drop me an email. My address is on my sealevel.info web site.
Dave
“if we stopped producing fossil fuels today, we would all die”
No, not all of us, but it would be pretty easy to predict those who would…
BobM
Concise review, but you might want to wait until WTI is down to around 27.
On annual averages.
Industrial commodities suffer significant declines during lengthy post-bubble contractions.
If you want to put fossil fuel companies out of business, it’s really very simple – stop buying their products.
No company can survive that.
So how many of these people continue to buy products from the companies they vilify? And how exactly do they justify that?
From the Futile and Stupid Gesture Dept:
Feeling guilty about using all that electricity generated by those dirty brown fossil fuel generators?
Well fear not! For only an additional 1.5 cents/kwh, you can enjoy the benefits of RECs (Renewable Energy Certificates) purchased in addition to the kwh you already purchased from your provider!
Just think of it, you have virtually transitioned from planet destroying emissions to the wonderful new clean world of renewables. You are now greener than Kermit!
Now you can sleep in peace (or elseware).
Lookup “Arcadia” for some real, put your money where your brain was, virtue signaling.
The American Prospect(s)… (Are dim if these climate activists are typical of the results of Ivy League education – DHM) –
well maybe they are somewhat “typical”:
https://www.google.com/search?q=american+school+scandal+parents+paid&oq=american+school+scandal+parents+paid&aqs=chrome.