Instead of a ‘stop things’ movement, Clark would like to see more emphasis on making proactive, positive investments: “We can preferentially direct our investments into areas with an energy and climate agenda.”
global energy policy at HKS, agrees that approval of Keystone wouldn’t make big a difference in terms of global carbon dioxide emissions. He is concerned that the “theater” of fights over Keystone and divestment makes it more difficult to have an honest conversation about the costs and benefits of specific policies that would make a difference in global emissions. “The worldview of the people arguing for divestment and so forth often seems to be disconnected from the facts,” he says. “I’m always fundamentally concerned about people who say things that are not true: ‘Keystone is the end of the world. Game over.’ That’s just silly.” “I’m in favor of taxing all energy-related emissions and putting a price on them,” he says. “A lot of people would be prepared to pay five percent of GDP” to stay within safe limits on atmospheric carbon levels, “but not everybody would.” He laments that environmental groups’ current tack leaves little room for a “nuanced conversation” about the critical question of “how much we’re willing to pay” to slow climate change. William Clark, Brooks professor of international science, public policy and human development at HKS, concedes that activists like McKibben “have a great moral advantage in this, in that they are doing something instead of simply wringing their hands.” He also acknowledges the potential symbolic power of campaigns to make a moral statement about the urgency of reigning in our consumption of fossil 6
Volume 5, Issue 1
fuels. But he shares his colleagues’ skepticism that divestment is the best way to go about it. “It’s not enough to say, ‘This is something we can get people to rally around.’” “There’s somewhere between a lack of clarity and a muddle in terms of what the divestment movement is trying to accomplish,” he says. “Divestiture isn’t a goal, it’s a means to some end.” If fossil fuel production stopped tomorrow, he points out, society as we know it would collapse. As individuals, we demand fossil fuels, he says. And the world economy is built on them. Clark appreciates the need to build momentum on the issue. But he points to Occupy Wall Street as a cautionary example of a movement that had some impact on the national conversation, and then faded for lack of clear objectives. “If you look back at the civil rights movement, one of the pieces of genius was managing to keep the outrage and moral focus of the movement tied to relatively small, achievable steps.” Clark would like to see, instead of a “negative, ‘stop things’ movement,” more emphasis on making proactive, positive investments: “We can preferentially direct our investments into areas with an energy and climate agenda.” If opposition is “needed to rally people,” Clark continues, “then let’s target the very worst, obstructionist actors, the ones undermining science and spreading disinforma-
tion. I would say, look, we’re a university, we may well have different perspectives as individuals over the right mix of fuels, the right degree of government intervention. But some individuals and firms out there are undermining the center of our existence as a university: respect for the importance and power of efforts to get closer to the truth. Target them.” McKibben has heard such criticisms before, and given his goal of “changing the mood” around the issue, he thinks targeting the Keystone pipeline and investments in fossil fuel companies might offer symbolic, rabble-rousing value that goes beyond the precise amount of carbon kept out of the atmosphere. The cognitive dissonance of the investment positions of institutions such as Harvard, he says, are fair game. “I don’t think we’re radical at all,” he says. “All we want is a world that works the way it did when we were born. We’re conservatives. It’s oil companies—and the Top: William Clark, Brooks professor of international science, public policy and human development at HKS. Bottom: William Hogan, Plank professor of global energy policy at HKS.