CAMBRIDGE ACCUSED OF ‘GREENWASHING’ AFTER APPOINTING FOSSIL FUEL RESEARCHER HEAD OF ‘ZERO CARBON INITIATIVE’ – biofuelwatch

[Andrew Lockley]

Poster's note: this PR / ad hom was picked up by the Graun, likely among others https://www.theguardian.com/education/2019/nov/23/students-accuse-cambridge-university-of-greenwashing-ties-with-oil-firms?CMP=Share_AndroidApp_Copy_to_clipboard

I think it's relevant to share as it's such a prominent and personal attack and the CNZ initiative is likely to be quite influential. 

https://www.biofuelwatch.org.uk/2019/cambridge-accused-of-greenwashing-after-appointing-fossil-fuel-researcher-head-of-zero-carbon-initiative/

CAMBRIDGE ACCUSED OF ‘GREENWASHING’ AFTER APPOINTING FOSSIL FUEL RESEARCHER HEAD OF ‘ZERO CARBON INITIATIVE’

Posted on November 19, 2019 by Henna

PRESS CONTACTS:

(1) AHSAN MEMON ahs...@gmail.com +447471767350

(2) BETH BHARGAVA bethbh...@gmail.com 07702654900

Cambridge University has been accused of ‘greenwashing’ after launching a ‘carbon neutral’ initiative with significant ties to the fossil fuel industry.

Emily Shuckburgh, the director of the initiative, has worked with Schlumberger on oil and gas projects; has accepted grants, funds and partnerships from BP among others.

Cambridge Zero is also seeking to foster controversial geoengineering under the guise of their proposed Climate Repair project in partnership with BP.

This follows continued opposition by VC Toope and Shuckburgh to divest the University’s endowments from the fossil fuel industry.

– Emily Shuckburgh –

On November 26th, the University of Cambridge plans to launch a new climate change initiative called ‘Cambridge Zero’. The University has been criticised strongly for appointing mathematician Emily Shuckburgh who has close research and material ties to Schlumberger and BP, as a Director for its ‘carbon neutral’ initiative.

1. In 2013, Shuckburgh accepted a grant for an oil and gas project and started to work with Schlumberger Cambridge Research.

2. Shuckbugh used data from Schlumberger streamers conducting seismic surveys to assess offshore oil and gas reserves.

3. The results were of immediate use to Schlumberger vessels towing hydrophones that have a damaging impact on marine life.

4. The project co-partner Timothy Grant, published the findings in multiple publications, including in 2015 and 2017 and stated that the work carried out with Shuckburgh has improved reservoir monitoring. Grant has also been credited for the development of percussion drilling technologies at the University of Cambridge in the book titled ‘ Drilling in Extreme Environments ’.

5. The publication co-authored by Shuckburgh in 2014 on accurately monitoring reservoirs has been removed and taken down from open sources.

6. Further work is being carried out to identify other possible applications of the findings within the oil and gas sector .

7. As early as 2011, Shuckburgh recruited postdoc(s) to work on Schlumberger Cambridge Research project to develop a method for estimating currents from Schlumberger vessels to be useful for Schlumberger in improving positioning.

8. And as recently as 2019, Shuckburgh became the principal investigator and co-director of CDT AI4ER (Centre for Doctoral Training in Application of Artificial Intelligence to the study of Environmental Risks), which received £6.7m of funding in partnership with BP and Schlumberger (amongst other companies).

9. Shuckburgh is the grant holder of CDT AI4ER, along with Simon Redfern from the BP Institute, on whose recommendations Cambridge University rejected full divestment.

10. Shuckburgh has also regularly given talks at events organised by the BP Institute, sharing a stage with BP executives and voicing her opposition to divestment.

Statements

A spokesperson for Cambridge Zero Carbon, a group of students and staff that has led the campaign for the university to divest from fossil fuels criticised the initiative and stated:

“Taking our society’s name (Cambridge Zero Carbon), which has stood for climate and reparative justice, for the University’s fossil fuel partnered PR stunt spin initiative (Cambridge Zero) in order to give social legitimacy to climate criminals is exceptionally unhinged and morally bankrupt. These greenwashing tactics won’t deceive anyone but cast further doubt over University’s seriousness to address climate change”.

“We demand Cambridge University to come clean and shut down Cambridge Zero. We also urge the University to abandon any future greenwashing initiatives that it might be planning to launch next time it is caught taking donations from fossil fuel industries to help them locate oil reservoirs”.

– Geoengineering –

The initiative has been set up and claims to be creating a zero-carbon future but has come under criticism from students and staff at the university and from wider advocacy groups for its public partnership with BP institute and desire to utilize geoengineering.

1. Under the name of ‘Climate Repair ’, Cambridge Zero will partner with the BP institute , a University institute endowed and partially funded by BP, to advance research on controversial geoengineering technologies.

2. Fossil fuel companies use the concept of climate repair to justify their ongoing extractive practises and delay legislation to cut carbon emissions. In 2011 the Bipartisan Policy Centre (BPC), which is funded by oil majors including Shell, ExxonMobil, Chevron and the American Petroleum Institute, published a report advocating for research into geoengineering or “Climate Repair” technologies.

3. Geoengineering technologies are proposed large-scale interventions in the Earth’s System to

either ‘offset’ global warming by manipulating the solar radiation reaching the atmosphere, or by sequestering carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. The technologies have not been proven at scale, and each of the technologies carries severe risks, including risks of exacerbating the climate crisis.

4. Earlier this year, the US and Saudi Arabia tried to block UN regulations on geoengineering to benefit their fossil fuel industries, in an attempt to reverse a 2010 de facto moratorium on geoengineering under the UN Convention on Biodiversity (CBD). The de-facto moratorium was agreed by world governments after environmental and indegenous rights campaigners highlighted for years the unpredictable impacts that geo-engineering would have to global populations, ecosystems and governance.

Statements

EcoNexus and Biofuelwatch are advocacy groups that highlight the significant risks of geoengineering. In a joint letter they respond to the launch of the ‘Cambridge Zero’ initiative: “We are alarmed to see Cambridge has succumbed to fossil fuel interests to research on geoengineering under the Orwellian spin of ‘Climate Repair’. Geoengineering is a fantasy technology that at best legitimises the ongoing ecocide and genocide perpetuated by fossil fuel companies, and if implemented would have devastating and unpredictable impacts on ecosystems and human communities around the world. If Cambridge wants to continue being a scientifically-respected institution, it must cut all links with the fossil fuel industry and stop promoting false solutions like geoengineering.”

A spokesperson for Cambridge Zero Carbon criticised the focus on geoengineering and added:

“This initiative is partnered with the BP Institute and aims to create a carbon-zero future for the university by utilising the unproven science of carbon capture, which has long been bankrolled and advocated by fossil fuel companies as a means to postpone action on climate crisis and continue their extractive practices. This technology pretends that business can continue exactly as normal, encouraging us to rely on a ‘miracle cure’ for ecocide.”

– Divestment Opposition –

In recent years, the University of Cambridge has come under scrutiny for revelations revealing its entanglement with the fossil fuel companies and executives. Despite this, it has been actively engaged in negotiating donations from fossil fuel industries for extractive research while appointing members who have a conflict of interests with the oil giants to assess divestment and lead climate change initiatives.

1. In October 2019, after campaigning for four years, Cambridge Zero Carbon Society released a new investigative report which explains the complex entanglement of the university with oil giants.

2. The report reveals that research carried out by Andy Woods, the head of the BP Institute at the University of Cambridge, has facilitated increased oil extractions and resulted in profits for the fossil fuel industry of up to $3bn annually.

3. The University of Cambridge most recently, after obtaining a leaked copy of the recent report written by Cambridge Zero Carbon Society, took down the CASP (Cambridge Arctic Shelf Programme) website.

4. CASP was formerly affiliated with the Earth Sciences Department at Cambridge University and (as the report reveals) has been entirely funded by oil and gas companies to explore further extraction sites.

5. The communications office responded by claiming that the site had “appeared” and stayed for more than 18 years on Cambridge University’s “internet ecosphere”. They further claimed that website deletion was not connected to the report but rather part of “cleaning” University’s “internet ecosphere”. However they were unable to provide any other examples of this cleaning.

6. In November 2019, The Guardian further revealed that the university had accepted a £6m donation from Shell for oil extraction research which was approved in March of this year.

Statements

A spokesperson for Cambridge Zero Carbon criticised the University’s opposition to divestment and said:

“As much as it is unsurprising at this point that the University, despite being an educational institute, would actively prioritise the benefits of fossil fuel corporations over its members, these revelations just go to show the extent to which our University management is compromised by the fossil fuel executives. Furthermore, University’s communications office publishing inaccurate and unsubstantiated claims to hide the complicity of oil giants and their influence over academic research is shamefully disgraceful and should not go unchecked. It is high time that the richest higher education institute of Europe starts acting socially responsible and commit to full divestment. And should cut all ties with planet-polluting, resources-devouring fossil fuel companies and their executives.”

– END –

Notes to Editors

Cambridge Zero Carbon Society website, including details on the campaign’s history in Cambridge, reports and open letters can be found at http://zerocarbonsoc.soc.srcf.net/.

The University of Cambridge has faced severe pressure to divest from fossil fuels over the last four years from both its own democratic channels and direct actions by its students, as well as from a wider public.

In 2017, the Paradise Papers revealed the extent of Cambridge University’s multi-million pound investments in the fossil fuel industry 

In 2018, BP CEO Bob Dudley warned Cambridge University against divestment and said: “We donate and do lots of research at Cambridge so I hope they [Cambridge University] comes to their senses on this [divestment]”.

Following this, Cambridge University Council voted against divestment from fossil fuels, following a report produced by a Divestment Working Group (DWG) which advised against it.

In 2019, The Guardian revealed the corruption of the DWG : most notably, a member of the DWG (Simon Redfern) had simultaneously negotiated a donation to the university worth £22m from BP and BHP Billiton.

A chain of high-profile individuals have expressed support for divestment at Cambridge. These include prominent politicians (e.g. John McDonnell, Caroline Lucas and Diane Abbott), national figures such as Rowan Williams, and renowned academics (e.g. Robert Macfarlane, Sir David King and Sir Thomas Blundell) .

This support culminated in an open letter to the University, calling upon it to divest ahead of last year’s Council decision, which accrued over 350 signatures from Cambridge academics.

A second open letter with over 200 academic signatures carried this momentum forward, criticising the findings of the University’s divestment working group report, on which the decision was to be based.

Student outrage has been expressed in several recent protests. Summer 2018 saw three students launch a six day hunger strike in support of divestment, which was quickly followed by a week-long student occupation of the University’s financial and administrative centre Greenwich House. In November 2018, 300 students marched through Cambridge in support of University Divestment, Decolonisation and Demilitarisation.

After the Council’s decision against divestment last summer, anger within Cambridge has mounted, compounded by more recent revelations in November regarding the disturbing extent of college investments in the fossil fuel sector .

In December, the University Council faced landmark internal dissent, not seen in over 20 years, as 5/25 councillors refused to back its annual report due to their anger over a lack of investment transparency. Over 200 Cambridge academics, with support from Naomi Klein, Noam Chomsky and Rowan Williams, wrote an open letter calling for significant reform to the investment office along the line of ‘transparency, accountability and divestment’ (full info here).

[Robert Tulip]

The attack from environmental NGOs and students at Cambridge University on the concept of climate repair illustrates the dangerously irrational currents of opinion that are prevalent in the popular movement for action on climate change.  The students allege that climate repair is an Orwellian front for fossil fuel industries, even though Sir David King, a main advocate of climate repair, has publicly distanced himself from fossil fuels and solar geoengineering and has called for Cambridge to divest from fossil fuels, as noted in the post below.  I have no personal contact with Cambridge University, but am interested in this debate from the perspective of seeking informed discussion on climate change.

The scientific incoherence in the opposition to climate repair is seen in the false logic of moral hazard, the fallacy that removing carbon from the air undermines efforts to cool the planet.  This moral hazard reasoning is nothing but an incorrect conspiracy theory, as stupid and dangerous as opposition to vaccination or chemtrails, and should be seen as socially and intellectually reprehensible.  That moral hazard thinking has a niche in the intellectual environment of Cambridge University shows the poor state of public information, illustrating the failure to inform these ignorant students of basic facts about climate change. 

It is obviously essential to analyse the risks of climate intervention, but advocacy groups like biofuelwatch who are behind these campaigns ignore the much larger risks inherent in failing to research technologies that are needed to regulate the planetary climate. The real moral hazard arises from failure to address climate repair.  The error at work here is the false belief that cutting emissions by decarbonizing the world economy could possibly be a sufficient response to climate change.  In fact, as the climate repair concept indicates, slowing global warming requires carbon removal on large scale, alongside efforts to cut emissions. 

A key point to understand is that the main driver of warming is past emissions, not present and future emissions.  The goal should be to convert past emissions into safe and useful commodities. That requires carbon mining at multi-gigatonne scale, based on intensive scientific research and development programs to assess technology options, aiming for net negative global emissions as the basis of climate repair and restoration.  The Oxford University site trillionthtonne.org says humans have added 635 gigatonnes of carbon to the air, growing by 20,000 tonnes per minute, about ten gigatons a year.  (Climate Action Tracker estimates the annual addition as 14 GT, a significant discrepancy against the Oxford calculation). 

Moral hazard reasoning tells us to ignore that committed warming from past emissions is the main cause of climate change. The line is that we should do nothing about past emissions because removing carbon to repair and restore the climate is a rival political strategy to the sole focus on decarbonization. But that just ignores how slowing down the speed at which the world burns new carbon into the air may be far more hard and costly than removing the carbon already added.

The lack of public debate and media coverage on the science and politics of climate repair is a problem that the new Cambridge Zero programs should address.  Net zero emissions, let alone the need for large scale net negative emissions, can only be achieved through investment in carbon removal technology as a primary strategy. The myth that ‘all we have to do is cut emissions’ has to be challenged for the sake of good climate policy. Ignorant blocking of the essential work of climate repair undermines climate security and is profoundly counter-productive, destroying prospects of movement toward a safe and stable planetary climate.

It is also worth noting that the Guardian article linked below was edited after publication to include response from Dr Shuckburgh, stating that her work “in no way implies a ‘connection with the fossil fuel industry.’”  It is disturbing that the public information released by Biofuelwatch and Econexus appears to have contained numerous errors.

Robert Tulip

On Sunday, 24 November 2019, 07:48:12 pm AEDT, Andrew Lockley <andrew....@gmail.com> wrote:

Poster's note: this PR / ad hom was picked up by the Graun, likely among others https://www.theguardian.com/education/2019/nov/23/students-accuse-cambridge-university-of-greenwashing-ties-with-oil-firms?CMP=Share_AndroidApp_Copy_to_clipboard

I think it's relevant to share as it's such a prominent and personal attack and the CNZ initiative is likely to be quite influential. 

https://www.biofuelwatch.org.uk/2019/cambridge-accused-of-greenwashing-after-appointing-fossil-fuel-researcher-head-of-zero-carbon-initiative/

Cambridge Zero Carbon Society website, including details on the campaign’s history in Cambridge, reports and open letters can be found at http://zerocarbonsoc.soc.srcf.net/.

The University of Cambridge has faced severe pressure to divest from fossil fuels over the last four years from both its own democratic channels and direct actions by its students, as well as from a wider public.

In 2017, the Paradise Papers revealed the extent of Cambridge University’s multi-million pound investments in the fossil fuel industry 

In 2018, BP CEO Bob Dudley warned Cambridge University against divestment and said: “We donate and do lots of research at Cambridge so I hope they [Cambridge University] comes to their senses on this [divestment]”.

Following this, Cambridge University Council voted against divestment from fossil fuels, following a report produced by a Divestment Working Group (DWG) which advised against it.

In 2019, The Guardian revealed the corruption of the DWG : most notably, a member of the DWG (Simon Redfern) had simultaneously negotiated a donation to the university worth £22m from BP and BHP Billiton.

A chain of high-profile individuals have expressed support for divestment at Cambridge. These include prominent politicians (e.g. John McDonnell, Caroline Lucas and Diane Abbott), national figures such as Rowan Williams, and renowned academics (e.g. Robert Macfarlane, Sir David King and Sir Thomas Blundell) .

This support culminated in an open letter to the University, calling upon it to divest ahead of last year’s Council decision, which accrued over 350 signatures from Cambridge academics.

A second open letter with over 200 academic signatures carried this momentum forward, criticising the findings of the University’s divestment working group report, on which the decision was to be based.

Student outrage has been expressed in several recent protests. Summer 2018 saw three students launch a six day hunger strike in support of divestment, which was quickly followed by a week-long student occupation of the University’s financial and administrative centre Greenwich House. In November 2018, 300 students marched through Cambridge in support of University Divestment, Decolonisation and Demilitarisation.

After the Council’s decision against divestment last summer, anger within Cambridge has mounted, compounded by more recent revelations in November regarding the disturbing extent of college investments in the fossil fuel sector .

In December, the University Council faced landmark internal dissent, not seen in over 20 years, as 5/25 councillors refused to back its annual report due to their anger over a lack of investment transparency. Over 200 Cambridge academics, with support from Naomi Klein, Noam Chomsky and Rowan Williams, wrote an open letter calling for significant reform to the investment office along the line of ‘transparency, accountability and divestment’ (full info here).

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[Chris Vivian]

Robert,

 

You did not read the Guardian report carefully enough. The Cambridge Zero Carbon Society did not “…allege that climate repair is an Orwellian front for fossil fuel industries…”. That statement was the view of EcoNexus and Biofuelwatch. If you look at the Cambridge Zero Carbon Society’s website (http://zerocarbonsoc.soc.srcf.net/) you will see that their focus is to get Cambridge University to divest fossil fuel investments. Consequently, the comments in your post related to the University are invalid.

 

Chris.

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/CarbonDioxideRemoval/30064676.3477447.1574732463126%40mail.yahoo.com.

[Robert Tulip]

Hi Chris, thanks for the point of clarification on the non-citation of Orwell by Cambridge student activists, but that is only a false quibble.  Their quoted statements in this thread are completely in line with the opposition of Biofuelwatch to climate repair, as further explained at the Cambridge Zero Carbon Society twitter post stating “We also targeted our criticism at Cambridge Zero’s promotion of ‘climate repair’ and other forms of geoengineering.”  The Guardian article you mention is much more balanced than the activist statements, but the thread here does not include it except as a link.

Your assertion that my comments are somehow “invalid" appears to be defending the Cambridge Zero Carbon Society, and associating them with the University, by suggesting the alleged invalidity of my comments about CZCS has some broader unspecified relevance to the University.  Perhaps I misunderstood your comment?

CZCS is a group that says the naming of Cambridge Zero “is exceptionally unhinged and morally bankrupt,” a “greenwashing initiative… to help [fossil fuel companies] locate oil reservoirs”.  The thread suggests that “criticism from students and staff at the university” includes that “under the name of ‘Climate Repair ’, Cambridge Zero will partner with the BP institute” and that “fossil fuel companies use the concept of climate repair to justify their ongoing extractive practises and delay legislation to cut carbon emissions.” 

Now perhaps some may see the attribution of these views to Cambridge students and staff as a piece of mischief by Biofuelwatch, but the twit post above rebuts that. My reference to Orwell is in full accord with the views of the Cambridge Zero Carbon Society.

So I am mystified Chris as to why you would seemingly imply that the divestment focus of this Zero Carbon Society at all reduces their apparent opposition to the concept of climate repair. They are against climate repair.

The problem I was drawing attention to was that CZCS and their NGO fellow travellers have thoroughly misunderstood the meaning and importance of climate repair as an essential goal for addressing global warming.  Far from being “invalid”, support for climate repair offers a different and challenging line of thinking from the preferred strategy of emission reduction alone.

Kind Regards

Robert Tulip

On Friday, 29 November 2019, 09:55:10 pm AEDT, Chris Vivian <chris....@btinternet.com> wrote:

Robert,

 

You did not read the Guardian report carefully enough. The Cambridge Zero Carbon Society did not “…allege that climate repair is an Orwellian front for fossil fuel industries…”. That statement was the view of EcoNexus and Biofuelwatch. If you look at the Cambridge Zero Carbon Society’s website (http://zerocarbonsoc.soc.srcf.net/) you will see that their focus is to get Cambridge University to divest fossil fuel investments. Consequently, the comments in your post related to the University are invalid.

 

Chris.

 

From: 'Robert Tulip' via Carbon Dioxide Removal <CarbonDiox...@googlegroups.com>
Sent: 26 November 2019 01:41
To: CarbonDiox...@googlegroups.com <CarbonDiox...@googlegroups.com> <carbondiox...@googlegroups.com>; geoengineering <geoengi...@googlegroups.com>; Andrew Lockley <andrew....@gmail.com>
Subject: Re: [CDR] CAMBRIDGE ACCUSED OF ‘GREENWASHING’ AFTER APPOINTING FOSSIL FUEL RESEARCHER HEAD OF ‘ZERO CARBON INITIATIVE’ – biofuelwatch

 

The attack from environmental NGOs and students at Cambridge University on the concept of climate repair illustrates the dangerously irrational currents of opinion that are prevalent in the popular movement for action on climate change.  The students allege that climate repair is an Orwellian front for fossil fuel industries, even though Sir David King, a main advocate of climate repair, has publicly distanced himself from fossil fuels and solar geoengineering and has called for Cambridge to divest from fossil fuels, as noted in the post below.  I have no personal contact with Cambridge University, but am interested in this debate from the perspective of seeking informed discussion on climate change.

The scientific incoherence in the opposition to climate repair is seen in the false logic of moral hazard, the fallacy that removing carbon from the air undermines efforts to cool the planet.  This moral hazard reasoning is nothing but an incorrect conspiracy theory, as stupid and dangerous as opposition to vaccination or chemtrails, and should be seen as socially and intellectually reprehensible.  That moral hazard thinking has a niche in the intellectual environment of Cambridge University shows the poor state of public information, illustrating the failure to inform these ignorant students of basic facts about climate change. 

It is obviously essential to analyse the risks of climate intervention, but advocacy groups like biofuelwatch who are behind these campaigns ignore the much larger risks inherent in failing to research technologies that are needed to regulate the planetary climate. The real moral hazard arises from failure to address climate repair.  The error at work here is the false belief that cutting emissions by decarbonizing the world economy could possibly be a sufficient response to climate change.  In fact, as the climate repair concept indicates, slowing global warming requires carbon removal on large scale, alongside efforts to cut emissions. 

A key point to understand is that the main driver of warming is past emissions, not present and future emissions.  The goal should be to convert past emissions into safe and useful commodities. That requires carbon mining at multi-gigatonne scale, based on intensive scientific research and development programs to assess technology options, aiming for net negative global emissions as the basis of climate repair and restoration.  The Oxford University site trillionthtonne.org says humans have added 635 gigatonnes of carbon to the air, growing by 20,000 tonnes per minute, about ten gigatons a year.  (Climate Action Tracker estimates the annual addition as 14 GT, a significant discrepancy against the Oxford calculation). 

Moral hazard reasoning tells us to ignore that committed warming from past emissions is the main cause of climate change. The line is that we should do nothing about past emissions because removing carbon to repair and restore the climate is a rival political strategy to the sole focus on decarbonization. But that just ignores how slowing down the speed at which the world burns new carbon into the air may be far more hard and costly than removing the carbon already added.

The lack of public debate and media coverage on the science and politics of climate repair is a problem that the new Cambridge Zero programs should address.  Net zero emissions, let alone the need for large scale net negative emissions, can only be achieved through investment in carbon removal technology as a primary strategy. The myth that ‘all we have to do is cut emissions’ has to be challenged for the sake of good climate policy. Ignorant blocking of the essential work of climate repair undermines climate security and is profoundly counter-productive, destroying prospects of movement toward a safe and stable planetary climate.

It is also worth noting that the Guardian article linked below was edited after publication to include response from Dr Shuckburgh, stating that her work “in no way implies a ‘connection with the fossil fuel industry.’”  It is disturbing that the public information released by Biofuelwatch and Econexus appears to have contained numerous errors.

Robert Tulip

 

 

 

On Sunday, 24 November 2019, 07:48:12 pm AEDT, Andrew Lockley <andrew....@gmail.com> wrote:

 

 

Poster's note: this PR / ad hom was picked up by the Graun, likely among others https://www.theguardian.com/education/2019/nov/23/students-accuse-cambridge-university-of-greenwashing-ties-with-oil-firms?CMP=Share_AndroidApp_Copy_to_clipboard

I think it's relevant to share as it's such a prominent and personal attack and the CNZ initiative is likely to be quite influential. 

 

https://www.biofuelwatch.org.uk/2019/cambridge-accused-of-greenwashing-after-appointing-fossil-fuel-researcher-head-of-zero-carbon-initiative/

Cambridge Zero Carbon Society website, including details on the campaign’s history in Cambridge, reports and open letters can be found at http://zerocarbonsoc.soc.srcf.net/.

 

The University of Cambridge has faced severe pressure to divest from fossil fuels over the last four years from both its own democratic channels and direct actions by its students, as well as from a wider public.

 

In 2017, the Paradise Papers revealed the extent of Cambridge University’s multi-million pound investments in the fossil fuel industry 

In 2018, BP CEO Bob Dudley warned Cambridge University against divestment and said: “We donate and do lots of research at Cambridge so I hope they [Cambridge University] comes to their senses on this [divestment]”.

Following this, Cambridge University Council voted against divestment from fossil fuels, following a report produced by a Divestment Working Group (DWG) which advised against it.

In 2019, The Guardian revealed the corruption of the DWG : most notably, a member of the DWG (Simon Redfern) had simultaneously negotiated a donation to the university worth £22m from BP and BHP Billiton.

A chain of high-profile individuals have expressed support for divestment at Cambridge. These include prominent politicians (e.g. John McDonnell, Caroline Lucas and Diane Abbott), national figures such as Rowan Williams, and renowned academics (e.g. Robert Macfarlane, Sir David King and Sir Thomas Blundell) .

This support culminated in an open letter to the University, calling upon it to divest ahead of last year’s Council decision, which accrued over 350 signatures from Cambridge academics.

A second open letter with over 200 academic signatures carried this momentum forward, criticising the findings of the University’s divestment working group report, on which the decision was to be based.

Student outrage has been expressed in several recent protests. Summer 2018 saw three students launch a six day hunger strike in support of divestment, which was quickly followed by a week-long student occupation of the University’s financial and administrative centre Greenwich House. In November 2018, 300 students marched through Cambridge in support of University Divestment, Decolonisation and Demilitarisation.

After the Council’s decision against divestment last summer, anger within Cambridge has mounted, compounded by more recent revelations in November regarding the disturbing extent of college investments in the fossil fuel sector .

In December, the University Council faced landmark internal dissent, not seen in over 20 years, as 5/25 councillors refused to back its annual report due to their anger over a lack of investment transparency. Over 200 Cambridge academics, with support from Naomi Klein, Noam Chomsky and Rowan Williams, wrote an open letter calling for significant reform to the investment office along the line of ‘transparency, accountability and divestment’ (full info here).

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