Happy Nice Mall

Is it okay to accept money from fossil fuel companies?

The question is ringing loudly at Stanford University. This month, hundreds of students, faculty, and alumni told the university’s new climate school in an open letter: reduce funding from fossil fuel companies.

The letter was, in part, a response to an interview that the school’s inaugural dean, Arun Majumdar, gave to my colleague David Gelles at the Times. said the school is open to donations from oil companies. Majumdar said the school, known as the Stanford Doerr School of Sustainability, would be willing to work with companies that “want to diversify and be part of the solution.”

But students and faculty argue that fossil fuel companies simply want to divert attention from their role in an ongoing climate crisis. In the letter, he said accepting money from an industry with “a proven track record of actively hiding scientific consensus on climate change” “constitutes a conflict of interest”.

It is an issue that not only universities but also many institutions around the world struggle with. Two environmental nonprofit groups, Stand.earth and 350.org, started a website for keeping track of divestment commitments from universities, banks, companies and even Queen II. from Elizabeth. The list includes more than 1,500 institutions and businesses worth nearly $40 trillion to date. (The New York Times accepts ads from fossil fuel companies.)

In his keynote speech this morning at Seton Hall University in New Jersey, United Nations secretary-general António Guterres urged students to stay away from fossil fuel companies. “Don’t work for climate disruptors,” he said. “Use your skills to guide us towards a renewable future.”

Back at Stanford, a survey of students about the measures they want the new climate school to implement revealed that refusing money from polluting industries highest priority.

Celina Scott-Buechler, a doctoral student in the Stanford School of Earth, Energy and Environmental Sciences, said she thinks the moment reflects the decline of the tobacco industry.

The parallels between the two situations are clear. Both sectors accused of working campaigns to mislead consumers and government agencies about the real dangers associated with their products. Both faced lawsuits on these grounds.

in 2016 researchers unearth documents This suggested that both the oil and tobacco companies hire the same public relations firms and research organizations to combat claims that their products are harmful.

Yet there are differences. As we know very well, fossil fuels are central to modern life in a way that cigarettes are not, and changing that is a huge challenge. And many, like Majumdar, say they believe in working with companies in their plans to transform their businesses. The general idea is that collaborating on credible plans for the transition to the clean energy sector is far more beneficial than fleeing companies.

For example, when the Norwegian sovereign wealth fund, the largest of its kind in the world, announced in 2019 it would withdraw from fossil fuels, it did not include oil companies that invested. clean energy technology.

Whatever happens, scientists say, should happen sooner rather than later.

According to this A timeline by the PBS program “Frontline” Forty years passed between the first scientific research showing the dangers of smoking and the 1990s when states began suing to recover money spent treating patients who smoked.

It was then that institutions began to reject tobacco money (The Times stopped accepting cigarette ads in 1999), but several medical schools decided to reject donations just a few years ago.

scientists, human activity has an effect About the planet’s climate in the 1980s. But only in recent years have US states brought lawsuits against fossil fuel companies. They argue as they do in lawsuits against the tobacco industry: companies misled them.

But activists in the divestment movement argue that in the event of climate change, the planet doesn’t have decades to increase the pressure on fossil fuel companies.

Scott-Buechler said he hopes the research he and others has put forth “could be a call to act faster than the institutions of the past.”

Before you go: Fast fashion and ethical shopping

What do you do if you want to shop responsibly but have a tight budget? The Times’ chief fashion critic, Vanessa Friedman, writes that some cheap fashion brands are better than others, but how long you wear the clothes really does matter. Advice: If you’re going to buy something new, buy long term not weekend.

Correction

Last Friday’s news release misidentified the results of a report by the World Meteorological Organization. While the agency finds that the world’s oceans haven’t been that acidic in 26,000 years, that time frame doesn’t apply to ocean heat. (The last time the oceans were this warm was more than 100,000 years ago.)

Thank you for reading. We’ll be back on Friday.

Claire O’Neill and Douglas Alteen contributed to Climate Forward.

Contact us climateforward@nytimes.com. We read every message and reply to many!