On Wednesday, at 12:15 p.m., pro-divestment group Mountain Justice (MJ) announced a new ultimatum to the board of managers: three specific board members must refrain from participating in the board’s decision-making on divestment, or MJ will intensify its campaign.
Holding signs reading “Carbon emissions – air pollution – 8 million deaths a year” and “Rhonda Cohen – Board of Glenmede Trust – $1 billion in Fossil Fuel Industry,” 18 members of Mountain Justice, accompanied by Professor of Religion, Mark Wallace, staged a demonstration at the Philadelphia offices of investment and wealth management firm Glenmede Trust on Wednesday morning.
Today, Swarthmore Mountain Justice called on Board members Rhonda Cohen ’76, Samuel Hayes III ’57, and Harold Kalkstein ’78, to recuse themselves from future conversations on fossil fuel divestment. The Board’s decision not to divest last May was compromised by conflicts of interest among these three Board members who have considerable personal and financial ties…
The charge will levy a fee of 0.5% of each academic department’s budget. The money gathered will be used to establish a fund dedicated to carbon-reduction projects. Increasing carbon efficiency has been a major priority of facilities staff for a long time, according to Aurora Winslade, Director of Sustainability.
The national fossil fuel divestment movement started at Swarthmore with the student group Swarthmore Mountain Justice. In 2010, a group of students traveled to West Virginia on their spring and fall breaks to learn about mountaintop removal coal mining and its effects on the communities of Appalachia.
We write in response to the Feb. 25 guest opinion, “Board Members’ Conflicts of Interest in Regards to the Fossil Fuel Industry Leave Us No Choice but to Escalate”. Many of the assertions in the piece are unfounded and present a distorted picture of the efforts the Board and the administration have undertaken.
On January 27th, Swarthmore Mountain Justice revealed the considerable conflicts of interest held on the part of three Board members, Rhonda Cohen ’76, Samuel Hayes III ’57, and Harold Kalkstein ’78. As of June 30, 2015, firms associated with these three Board members held more than $25 billion worth of investments in energy companies, severely compromising the integrity of any board decisions on divestment.
In the three days since negotiators reached an agreement in Paris, I’ve seen the deal heralded as everything from “the world’s greatest diplomatic success” to “just bullshit” . There seems to be little consensus as to whether COP-21’s outcome was phenomenal, devastating, or even meaningful whatsoever.
by Lee Smithey This op-ed appeared in The Phoenix on Thursday 25 February 2016 This past weekend, the Board of Managers at Swarthmore College approved an internal charge on greenhouse gas emissions. We should mark what appears to be an initial step toward developing a carbon pricing model.
The College is sending its 3rd annual delegation to Paris for COP21. Read the delegation’s daily blog updates here. In 2013, the College applied for and was granted NGO observer status to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change ( UNFCCC) Conference of the Parties (COP).