Where Our Obligations Begin

The president begins: "Our planet faces urgent and complex environmental problems that, if unaddressed, threaten to do incalculable damage to human well-being and the natural world." He then describes an admirable list of initiatives to reduce the carbon footprint of the campus and to increase research programs in environmental studies. But nary a mention of the incredible impact that could be made in key industries and on the national conversation by re-investing all fossil-fuel industry holdings in our endowment fund into renewable-energy investments. Do the "ethical obligations of all citizens and institutions" not extend to our economic investments? Shouldn't that be where our obligations actually begin? "For what shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?" And then lose the whole world as well ...

And then there is this: My fossil-fuel-free mutual funds have returned 13.24% in 2019.