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Expensive President Marc Tessier-Lavigne,
We’re writing to you as college students devoted to Stanford College’s mission of contributing to the moral, ecological and environmental wellbeing of the world, our native communities and future generations. We wish to thanks in your management in forming the brand new Faculty of Sustainability and Local weather (SoSaC). We’re excited concerning the college’s doable collaborations throughout the College and with the group to pursue an equitable, simply and swift transition to a sustainable world.
We’d additionally like to make use of this letter to specific a few of our issues relating to the affect of fossil gas sponsors in educational analysis at Stanford, and make the case for why Stanford ought to reject all items from the fossil gas trade to the brand new Faculty of Sustainability and Local weather. We define this proposal in our petition, which college students, employees, college and alumni are welcome to signal.
In our conversations with the SoSaC Blueprint Advisory Committee, we discovered that there was no public dedication to mitigating monetary conflicts of curiosity from the fossil gas trade. There’s a actual threat that, in a faculty meant to generate local weather options, progress will probably be restricted by such contradicting incentives.
Our concern stems from the truth that fossil gas funding is prevalent in current Stanford setting and power analysis. For instance, the Global Climate and Energy Project (GCEP) ran from 2003 to 2018 with a acknowledged purpose to “establish promising analysis alternatives for low-emissions, high-efficiency power applied sciences.” GCEP’s sponsors included ExxonMobil, Dupont, Financial institution of America and Toyota. The Strategic Energy Alliance, managed by Stanford’s Precourt Institute for Vitality, was created in 2018. Its purpose is to “speed up the tempo of this transformation involving clear power improvement, deployment, scale-up and finance.” Of the 4 founding members, three are oil corporations: Shell, ExxonMobil and Complete. On the entire, Stanford has accepted tens of thousands and thousands of {dollars} from fossil gas corporations to conduct analysis since 2011, in line with the Stanford Stanford Digital Analysis Administration (SeRA) database.
Nonetheless, the fossil gas trade has ulterior motives for funding analysis at Stanford. By accepting funding from fossil gas corporations for analysis, nevertheless well-intentioned, Stanford turns into complicit within the fossil gas trade’s greenwashing ways and its well-documented historical past of local weather denial. Main gamers reminiscent of Exxon, Shell and the American Petroleum Institute understood the severity of the local weather disaster as many as four decades ago. Nonetheless, these corporations have labored tirelessly to hinder progress and sow the seeds of disinformation within the years since. As a memo by the American Petroleum Institute remarked in 1998, manufacturing doubt is their key goal: “Victory will probably be achieved” when common residents start to “acknowledge uncertainties in local weather science.”
Extra just lately, the fossil gas trade realized that it may not help local weather denial whereas sustaining credibility, so its denial strategy shifted to framing itself as the answer to local weather change. Fossil gas corporations publicly voice their dedication to combating local weather change and achieve their “social license to function” by funding local weather analysis, however the bulk of their actions don’t stroll the speak.
Whereas the Intergovernmental Panel on Local weather Change (IPCC) has urged nations to lower emissions by 7.6% annually over the following decade, fossil gas corporations proceed to burn oil and fuel at a report tempo. Actually, they plan to enhance manufacturing by 7% over the following 4 years as an alternative, pouring almost $1.4 trillion into new oil and pure fuel initiatives. In the meantime, these corporations have devoted solely a fraction of their budgets to different power (as little as 1.3% by some estimates). Within the three years for the reason that Paris Local weather Accords, the 5 largest publicly traded oil and fuel corporations spent over $1 billion to delay, control or block local weather laws. These efforts mimic these of Large Tobacco; certainly, the 2 industries have traditionally employed the same lobbyists and utilized the identical ways.
Public acceptance isn’t the one boon the trade positive factors by funding analysis. In addition they achieve a regarding stage of affect over analysis priorities. Stanford Industrial Affiliate Program members are represented on program governance boards and might customize analysis primarily based on firm pursuits. Moreover, as Dr. Benjamin Franta explains, trade sponsors selectively affect the panorama of analysis by making certain that “secure” analysis areas get funded extra typically than analysis areas that might threaten the trade’s enterprise.
We argue that accepting funding from the fossil gas trade poses an inherent battle of curiosity for the Faculty of Sustainability and threatens researchers’ educational integrity. The fossil gas trade’s main sources of income are the very merchandise we should part out with a purpose to meaningfully sort out local weather change. The Faculty of Sustainability is a product of Stanford’s Lengthy Vary Vision (LRV) for Sustainability, reflecting the Stanford group’s widespread want to pave the way in which in direction of sustainability and environmental justice. Thus, the college should take all doable measures to keep away from conflicts of curiosity that might undermine this imaginative and prescient.
For these causes, we ask that the Stanford Faculty of Sustainability and Local weather undertake the next requirements when sourcing funds, each now and in perpetuity:
- The Faculty of Sustainability and Local weather won’t settle for items from or kind analysis partnerships with any fossil gas corporations or their subsidiaries. FTSE Russell defines fossil gas corporations as corporations that discover, personal or instantly extract carbon reserves.
- All funding sources of analysis in SoSaC needs to be publicly acknowledged, each in printed papers and in any web site or information promotion of the analysis.
We consider that following these requirements is important for shielding the integrity of the analysis carried out inside the Faculty of Sustainability and Local weather. We urge you to make sure neutral analysis and decrease conflicts of curiosity by avoiding the monetary affect of fossil gas corporations within the new SoSaC. We’d additionally wish to acknowledge and help existing calls to make sure robust institutionalized help for environmental justice work within the new SoSaC.
If you’re a pupil, employees, college member or alum who helps this proposal, please sign our petition here to name on the Faculty of Sustainability to refuse fossil gas funding! We look ahead to having a middle on campus targeted on sustainability and a swift transition to a decarbonized society.
Sincerely,
Fossil Free Stanford (GoFossilFreeStanford.org)
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