Hamilton College’s Environmental and Social Responsibility

Note: this piece was also published in the Hamilton College opinion publication The Monitor on Friday, September 27th, 2019.

Last week’s rally showed that students here at Hamilton care deeply about where our planet and species are headed. One major point of the rally was our responsibility here at Hamilton College.

Let us begin by saying that no institution is devoid of social responsibility, full stop. Our actions can never be removed from their consequences and the people they impact. Actions do not exist in a vacuum and will also have direct and indirect effects, regardless of the intentions behind them. In a time of global crisis, our actions will either contribute to or fight global heating. We cannot pretend that this is not the case. In fact, we already make choices based on this understanding of external responsibility.

Recently, Hamilton College has made an active effort to acknowledge that we are on the ancestral land of the Oneida people. At official events, like convocation and graduation, a statement is delivered to this effect. There are many efforts by students, faculty, and administration to cultivate a relationship with the people whose land we are on. Further, Hamilton makes an institutional effort to engage with the Clinton and Utica communities. How do we justify these things? Because they are the right thing to do, and promote positive social good. It is a position favoring social responsibility to say we owe any debt to anyone other than ourselves.

We cannot be selective about which social responsibilities we adhere to based on their convenience to us. At that point, we are not doing things because they are the right thing but because they are beneficial to us. This is not to say that we cannot use both as reasoning, but rather that we are not being honest if we claim to value social good when the real determinant is benefit to the College.

Further, we can view these decisions as an opportunity to make Hamilton a moral leader across the country. A few examples of schools that have taken steps to do this already are Middlebury, the entirety of the University of California school system, and our good friends over at Colgate. Our leadership here can inspire more positive change across the country.

The climate crisis is the ultimate social responsibility, not only to the rest of the world but also to our students who will live in it. I strongly encourage a reading of the (relatively) short Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s October 2018 Summary for Policymakers of the Special Report on Global Warming of 1.5०. Time is running out, and every single thing we can do to reduce our emissions must be done if we are to have hope for a continuation of our global society.

Thus, there are two ways in which we ought to adhere to these responsibilities in regard to the climate crisis.

The first is what we do on campus. This year, New York State passed the Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act. This law mandates that the State of New York achieve a 100% clean energy system by the year 2040. Hamilton College’s current Climate Action Plan sets our carbon-neutral date at 2050. As stands, our goals are 10 years behind what is required by law.

This is not the only reason to move up the date. Let’s reflect for a moment: Hamilton College is a school of less than 2,000 students, and is already well ahead of schedule on its carbon emission reductions. A deadline 30 years from now is not ambitious enough for a school like Hamilton. Why not accelerate our goal to 2030? With the intelligent, committed people who work and study here, surely we can develop a plan that gets us there. In fact, the newly formed Sustainability Working Group is looking to do precisely that: develop a new Climate Action Plan that demonstrates what we can do to get even further ahead of schedule. We should actively listen to what plans they develop, and give them the full funding they deserve. Anything less than what is possible is us not living up to our full obligations.

It should also be noted that doing so also helps to fulfill our already existing commitment to the Oneida people to be caring stewards of this land. The College surely emits far more greenhouse gases than the Oneida would if they were the current stewards of this land.

The second issue is what to do with the endowment. As it stands, the College has millions of dollars invested in fossil fuel companies. We do not know the precise amount, the companies which we are invested in, how much is in direct holdings and how much is in indirect holdings, how much and frequent the dividends are, nor the exact timeline for divestment. We also do not know for sure that this is the fastest possible timeline because we do not have the rest of this information. We do know from conversations with administration that the plan is to divest, and that by the end of this year about 1% of our near-billion dollar endowment will be in these companies. That is a very good thing, but a crucial part of this conversation is transparency, and that is something which will help facilitate these discussions. A publicly available white paper on the financial reasoning behind these decisions as well as their details would be an extraordinarily useful document to achieve this transparency.

In response to the position that the College does not take moral/political/social positions via its endowment, the question arises: haven’t we done this already? The millions of dollars Hamilton has in fossil fuel companies enables their practices. That’s what investments do. It is absolutely taking a position to say that a company is worthy of our investment. After all, we are providing the material conditions for their actions. We are partially responsible for them. Further, we then derive profit from what they are doing to systematically destroy the environment we live in. To be clear, it is obviously not the intent of the Board of Trustees to do so, but it is the consequence.

A pioneering way to address the harms we have previously invested in is by proactively investing an equal or greater amount into socially responsible renewable energy companies. We should consider the lifetime impact the College has had on promoting the extraction, production, and distribution of fossil fuels via its endowment. These are tangible harms that will impact every single one of its current and future students, as well as many of its alumni. Being a part of the solution, renewable energy, is a way for the College to further and unequivocally demonstrate its commitment to its community and planet.

Nationally, reinvestment has not been the focus of this movement. Most have pushed exclusively for divestment. At Hamilton we should say that we are national leaders. By making a targeted goal of our investments the building of renewable energy infrastructure across the United States, especially in states that have not issued 100% renewable commitments, we will become a force for good that others will be pressured to follow.

An additional reason is, indeed, the finances of it. Government policy in the coming years will very likely provide heavy incentives (as well as direct funding) for the building of renewable energy infrastructure. Investments in renewables will be incredibly lucrative in a green economy. The sheer scale of change necessary to move from fossil fuels to renewables will necessitate millions of renewable energy projects, and that is a lot of money. Again, finances should be a consideration but not the first and only consideration on this issue. The global implications of investment should take the front seat, and finances as a factor of which specific holdings are taken.

Hamilton College is a prestigious institution known for its dedication to its community, both on its campus and the area surrounding it. The actions we take to fight the climate crisis are deeply intertwined with that commitment. We are in unprecedented times that require unprecedented actions with bold, moral clarity. We must stand together in the face of the most dangerous crisis humanity has ever seen and say that we have a position. Our position is survival.