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Harvard Students Move Fossil Fuel Stock Fight To Court
mdsolar writes A group of Harvard students, frustrated by the university's refusal to shed fossil fuel stocks from its investment portfolios, is looking beyond protests and resolutions to a new form of pressure: the courts. The seven law students and undergraduates filed a lawsuit on Wednesday in Suffolk County Superior Court in Massachusetts against the president and fellows of Harvard College, among others, for what they call "mismanagement of charitable funds." The 11-page complaint, with 167 pages of supporting exhibits, asks the court to compel divestment on behalf of the students and "future generations."
Is it common stock or non-voting? If common stock then I would think they would want the school to have a vote in what the energy companies do. Regardless, if it's a wise investment that is generating profit, then it really doesn't matter. It's not like selling the stock is going to hurt the company or the stock value. I guess some people just can't sleep at night over these kinds of things.
Better known as 318230.
They've created the very creatures that will destroy them...
I thought universities were all about teaching you to think and education and knowledge and stuff? Now it looks like they're a business?
The anti-tobacco fight is just about over, as is the one over asbestos/mesothelioma. The new generation of lawyers will be getting obscenely rich fighting large investment funds over their investing in fuel companies.
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
"Lee Goldstein, a clinical instructor in the Harvard Law School legal aid bureau, said that the issue of whether the students were legally qualified to sue, known as standing, could be fatal to the students’ suit, as it was to the earlier suit brought by Mr. Bonifaz and others."
"could be" is a way of putting it politely.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
of Irony in the morning!
Kudos to the students for fighting this!
I thought this was going to be one of those lurid gay sex stories that start innocuously.
I think your time would be better spent playing those CD-I mario and zelda games.
The only thing worse than a lawyer is a law student, they think they can use the courts for anything.
Every time Bennett writes a new story on Sladshdot [slashdot.org], I take a free day and spend it reading the story
Wow, I can never get through novels that quickly.
How can I believe you when you tell me what I don't want to hear?
The entire Harvard faculty, student body and alumni sent to Syria where they can sue ISIS.
"The average reporter we talk to is 27 years old......They literally know nothing." - Ben Rhodes
And they'd be justified.
HBI's Law: Frequency of calling others Nazis is directly correlated with the likelihood of the accuser being Communist.
There isn't a company on earth that's not both (i) dependent on fossil fuels and (ii) encouraging their use, either directly or indirectly.
What happens if the investments in fossil fuel companies turn out the be the most profitable and the school loses money?
As Harvard's president said "the endowment is a resource, not an instrument to impel social or political change"
Some people die at 25 and aren't buried until 75. -Benjamin Franklin
Nothing says totally-justified like retaliating against students who are seeking redress and/or invoking their constitutional right to due process.
Every night from 9pm-5am turn off the electricty. Better yet, random rolling blackouts. Let them know what it's like to live somewhere where energy has to be rationed. Kids take it for granted
And they'd be justified.
How? Exactly.
The University will ask for a JMOL, the judge will grant it.
Then he will assign the costs to the students. Talk about student debt. Smart.
Just more occupier mentaility.
Sorry to disappoint you.
There are, probably, several alumni who are employed by those companies who would not want to see the publicity of their high prestige alma mater taking a public stand against their business.
Sorry, kids. Part of the attraction of Harvard is the business/political connections it gives you.
No. The appropriate reaction is to toss the suit for lack of merit and standing. Then assign the court cost and the legal costs of the University to the students/plaintiffs.
THat also has the added advantage of teaching the students about money.
Actually, I am relieved.
It's November and 1L students have been in class for a while.
HLS should teach vocabulary on the first day of class to 1Ls - particularly the meaning of the words "frivolous" and "standing". Sad that these students managed to get an undergraduate degree without understanding the meaning of those words and their applicability to lawsuits.
OTH, maybe they will learn a lot from this experience as the judge laughs uncontrollably and the entire courtroom joins in. Oh, and sanctions them. Hopefully they get a judge who went to Yale Law School - double humiliation.
Why is there an "insightful" mod and why isn't it "-1"? If I wanted insight, I wouldn't be reading
This should be fun to watch.
*gets more popcorn*
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
Frivilous Law Suits 101 makes it to /. in style.
Lithium Ion batteries were dropping in cost at 14%/year, but for the past 5 years have been dropping at 16%/year.
Plot that curve out a bit, and think about what that is going to do to the gasoline business, and when...
They are doing harm to the school (financially) and its image. Why should they remain as students? They don't run the place and they don't get to make this call.
HBI's Law: Frequency of calling others Nazis is directly correlated with the likelihood of the accuser being Communist.
i gave up burning fossil fuels (to every extent possible) well over a decade ago.
you/they have collectively burned far more than your fair share already.
my share - the oil i am not burning - stays in the ground, and this should be law.
haha, and also god is alive and well, and working on a much less ambitious project.
So they will have to prove global warming in order to win, that is going to be tough when there has not been a scientist yet to prove it. They would also need to establish that they are harmed in some way the school owning stocks in a company.
I don't know a whole lot of law, but that is almost basic knowledge. They have a picked a fight they can not win. They would have to find a judge that will blatantly ignore the law like the supreme court did on Obamacare.
Carbon fee and dividend (see www.citizensclimatelobby.org) creates a nudge (it starts out with a very light touch) to the whole economy to invest in innovation that create new products and local jobs to drive toward lower carbon based energy and products. The REMI economic model report, independent of any tree-hugg'n bug-eating save the world benefits, shows that a fee and dividend (give all the money back to US households), creates economic growth, new jobs, greater longevity (less pollution), etc.
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Seriously.
There's one reason this country enjoys the standard of living it has now.
Energy.
You want people swear off coal and oil right now when it makes up over 85% of the total power generated in this country? That's basically asking them to go back to living in caves. To having their kids die of preventable diseases. To going hungry if their crops fail or hunting sucks.
If you think THAT standard of living is so great, YOU GO FIRST. Once you've spent 10 years in your cave and proven it viable for the other 8 billion people on the planet, then, maybe, someone will follow your lead.
Until then, you need to shut the fuck up instead of flapping your gums on a subject you obviously know jack shit about.
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
Other than the IPO, the shares belong to other investors, right?
This issue is a bit more complicated than you think.
Actually I loved it and hope you do more!!!!' More!!!!!!!! Frequently contribute as the Bennett does!
That's what makes this so much fun. You take young people who haven't been totally corrupted by the world yet, teach them how to use the legal system as a weapon and then get hit by it for being morally corrupt. ( yes, killing the earth can't be good. If they are the owners of the company doing it it's not good. Also, now would be a nice time to quit oil stock. Still winning. Soon, not so much)
OH MY GOD. They will soon pay me to take lithium ion batteries. Better make some room for them right now.
Prices of electric vehicles need to drop a lot. Also, the vehicles need electricity, which is currently made by burning coal, oil, and people who fail at extrapolating.
as fossil fuels become more rare, the endowment should invest in MORE fossil fuels, because rarity will make it more valuable, not less.
I'm not sure there's anything particularly new about taking a grievance to court, however I daresay its warmer than marching around waving placards in the snow.
You want people swear off coal and oil right now when it makes up over 85% of the total power generated in this country? That's basically asking them to go back to living in caves. To having their kids die of preventable diseases. To going hungry if their crops fail or hunting sucks.
We don't have to. Let's say we pass a few reforms. Things like house the homeless($10k annually vs $40k to leave them on the street), reform sentences and prisons(1/2 the prison sentence AND less likely to come back?), and healthcare. The fed.gov already spends 90% of what it would take to provide single-payer UHC if we were paying the median for industrialized nations. The individual states more than pick up the remaining 10%. We currently spend ~$6.7k vs $2.9k. So fixing this ONE problem would enable states to put more money towards other important things without going into debt, help with the federal deficit, AND dump about a grand more into every family's pocket a month.
What does $3k a year, per person, pay for? A hell of a lot of solar panels and other sources of renewable power. We can improve our lives in a lot of other ways.
I don't read AC A human right
I only trust MyCleanPC.
And they'd be justified.
On what basis?
Do you really think that the school would get away lightly with expelling these students for exercising their right to free speech?
blindly antisocialist = antisocial
Your right to free speech is protection against the government (in theory), you have no first amendment right with regard to private entities... they can terminate a relationship with you for almost anything they want to ( aside from certain protected categories like race or age).
The school's image would be burdened by transparency and a greener long-term investment?
This just proves that you can be book smart and still be completely stupid and clueless as to how the real world works.
www.slightlycrewed.com - Because aren't we all?
Since Harvard students apparently need it put simply:
"Is it actually your money?"
"No?"
"Then shut the fuck up."
-Styopa
There are two aspects of the Harvard Charter which may give standing. First, the endowment has a specific purpose: "be for the advancement and education of youth, in all manner of good literature, arts, and sciences." And, good sciences say that investing in fossil fuels is a bad idea. Second, the Harvard Corporation is established so that it may be sued: "and also may sue and plead, or be sued and impleaded by the name aforesaid, in all Courts and places of judicature, within the jurisdiction aforesaid." http://library.harvard.edu/uni... So, disagreements about the endowment are supposed to be settled in court.
This letter from Harvard Magazine suggests you are mistaken:
In light of reporting in the July-August issue on Harvard’s position on fossil fuel divestment, we wrote Messrs. Paul J. Finnegan and James F. Rothenberg [members of the Harvard Corporation, and Treasurer and past Treasurer, respectively], expressing the perspective summarized below.
Harvard currently holds substantial investments in fossil fuel. The past is no longer prologue for this asset class.
The scientific community—including Harvard’s distinguished climate-related faculty—assert the world must hold global temperatures to no more than 2 degrees C above the preindustrial figure. Governments agree. And, yet, we have already gone half the distance to this ceiling, and are actually accelerating our rapid approach to it. We face an existential planetary threat.
By investing in fossil fuel companies that cling to the outdated business model of measuring success by discovery of new reserves, Harvard is encouraging (and expecting to profit from) the search for more fossil fuel—which will become unburnable if we stabilize global temperatures at levels necessary to sustain life as we know it. When the lid is put on, and carbon emissions are severely limited—as they must be—Harvard will be left holding stranded and devalued assets that can never be burned. (Proven reserves are three to four times what’s needed to transition to renewables by 2050.)
Across the country, hundreds of student organizations work to persuade their institutions’ endowments to divest. Sooner or later, as in the case of companies doing business in apartheid South Africa, divestment from fossil fuel companies will occur. Harvard should be among the first to do so. There are strong, independently sufficient arguments beyond the financial one of stranding to justify divestment. They include the moral (it is repugnant to profit from enterprises directly responsible for carbon emissions or to allow shareholder funds to be deployed in searching for more fossil fuel), the practical (a well-led institution should not wound itself by permitting endowment holdings to demoralize faculty and students, with adverse effects on quality of education, enrollment, and campus environment) and, in Harvard’s case, the unique opportunity (and corresponding duty) it has, as one of a handful of world leaders in education, to lead on this planetary issue.
We support these other arguments for divestment. However, we wanted to bring the financial argument, in particular, to Harvard’s attention. Over the past three years, equities in the coal industry declined by over 60 percent while the S&P 500 rose by some 47 percent. Coal, we submit, is the “canary in the oil well.” Disinvestment now, before this opinion becomes commonplace, is just sound, risk-averse investment judgment, fitting well within the duties of a fiduciary.
Bevis Longstreth, J.D. ’61
Retired partner, Debevoise & Plimpton; former member, Securities and Exchange Commission
Timothy E. Wirth ’61
Former U.S. Senator, president of the United Nations Foundation, and Harvard Overseer
http://harvardmagazine.com/201...
They're better off waiting until after they graduate and get asked for money for the endowment to make their move. While the endowment will survive for a long time, it's also used to help balance budgets for any of the other Harvard schools (Harvard Med, for example, does some heavy drawing when grant money runs low). That means that they still rely on new money coming in, and that's when graduates can start banding together and saying "we'll contribute when you divest". That will get the message across far better than now.
Free speech is standing around with signs chanting slogans. Filing a lawsuit and costing the university is a few steps outside that.
then you know it is the Ivy League
If the people handling the investment were to choose stocks based upon politics alone. Then they would be liable for mishandling the funds.
They are supposed to make as much money with the investments as they can. That is their responsibility.
If you sell the stock, somebody has to buy it. You've now spread the problem of owning this filth to other people. Better to keep it sequestered in your enlightened hands, where it can't blight any further lives.
It seems to me students just want to attract attention.
Unless these students contributed said charitable funds, they have no legal standing on their use.
get away lightly with expelling these students for exercising their right to free speech
Do you get away lightly for telling your boss to take a long walk off a short pier? Free speech doesn't mean you are free from the ramifications of said speech. Just that the government won't make laws against speech. Big difference.
They need to switch schools. Duh. These people are our future?!?? I'm scared.
And set the grade on their current law classes based on how successful they are in the suit. If the suit gets tossed out because there was no standing for the suit to begin with, they should all get F's for their current law classes.
These radicals are the "elite", the brilliant, the hope of the country. We're screwed.
Typical sort of thing you learn to expect from a bunch of snot eating turdball rolling bunch of over educated under capable tossers like that .
If you are wealthy and conservative, it's just to be expected as it is in your own self interest.
If you are poor and conservative, what the hell are you thinking? Why are you cutting your own throat so a few wealthy people can have lower taxes, lower estate taxes, and ship your jobs overseas if not ask you to build a stage so they can climb up on it and fire you?
There are no poor in America. There are only, in the words of John Steinbeck, "temporarily embarrassed millionaires."
One of the most insidiously effective tactics of the American right wing has been convincing the poor that they should support policies that only benefit the rich so that they can benefit from them when they're rich. (Though I'm not sure whether they were able to create such a sentiment, or merely capitalized and expanded upon one that was already there.)
Unfortunately, it seems to completely escape the understanding of far too many such that those same policies are making it that much harder for them to ever become rich.
Dan Aris
Fun. Free. Online. RPG. BattleMaster.
You want people swear off coal and oil right now when it makes up over 85% of the total power generated in this country? That's basically asking them to go back to living in caves. To having their kids die of preventable diseases. To going hungry if their crops fail or hunting sucks.
We don't have to. Let's say we pass a few reforms.
Oh Goodie! REFORMS!
Things like house the homeless($10k annually vs $40k to leave them on the street)
So, back to Cabrini Green? I'd also like to know where you get your numbers from.
reform sentences and prisons(1/2 the prison sentence AND less likely to come back?)
Half the sentence? Okay. Less likely to come back? You can't guarantee something like that. You just can't. And dumping recidivist offenders back on the street just allows them to prey on people again.
Now, half a death sentence? If you can figure that one out, I'd be interested to hear...
and healthcare
Which everyone else pays for.
The fed.gov already spends 90% of what it would take to provide single-payer UHC if we were paying the median for industrialized nations.
Sure, but I don't trust the government with a wooden nickle.
Or did you NOT notice that the country's multi-TRILLION dollar debt load.
The individual states more than pick up the remaining 10%.
Oh. That's cute. Expecting the state governments to kick in money out of the goodness of their hearts.
Sorry, unless someone's pockets are being lined at every step of the way, don't expect it to EVER get done.
We currently spend ~$6.7k vs $2.9k. So fixing this ONE problem would enable states to put more money towards other important things without going into debt, help with the federal deficit, AND dump about a grand more into every family's pocket a month.
What does $3k a year, per person, pay for? A hell of a lot of solar panels and other sources of renewable power. We can improve our lives in a lot of other ways.
You're assuming that the politicians don't load down such measures with pork projects. You're also expecting 100% participation, no recidivism, and nobody abusing the system.
I simply don't have that much faith in people.
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
I think this is a great idea but, why stop here. The university should immediately stop it's use the of all carbon based energy technologies everywhere on campus.
So, back to Cabrini Green? I'd also like to know where you get your numbers from.
How about a fact-check of a statement by theHUD secretary?
I had to look up Cabrini Green, and have to say 'not really'. The individual housing areas would be much smaller in number. The housing project you mentioned was originally aimed at low-income people, not the outright homeless.
Half the sentence? Okay. Less likely to come back? You can't guarantee something like that.
Put unstated 'on average' in there and you most certainly can. We've long passed the point of efficiency. Heck, compare our success rate with nordic countries and it shows that despite longer sentences we have worse outcomes, and that's after you control for crimes committed and everything else. Long prison sentences for stupid shit(like drug use) don't work, especially when the expense of the long sentence means that you end up not treating, rehabilitating, and training the prisoner.
If anything, I was being conservative about the benefits. Nordic countries manage to have 1/3rd the recidivism with 1/3rd the prison sentence(on average). Given how much we pay to incarcerate somebody for a year, how could this NOT be cheaper?
As for 'dumping recidivist offenders back on the street' - that's the POINT of making prison about reform - so they AREN'T nearly as likely to re-offend the moment they get back on the street. A 20% recidivism rate after 5 years of prison means LESS CRIME on the street than a 60% recidivism rate after 15.
Or did you NOT notice that the country's multi-TRILLION dollar debt load.
Ahem, original post: "help with the federal deficit". Besides that, I'm not sure how you came to the conclusion that I was ignoring our debt load when proposing 3 major policy changes all centered around saving money. Fortunately our deficit is down below $500B this year, which means that with only a minimum of extra belt tightening(see my proposals) to actually balance the thing. Then we can start paying off the debt.
Of course, attacking me as opposed to a strawman wouldn't let you do a good rant, now would it?
Oh. That's cute. Expecting the state governments to kick in money out of the goodness of their hearts.
You need to work on your reading comprehension. I'll restate: The federal and state governments combined already spend more than enough on healthcare to cover everybody in the USA under a system that reduces healthcare costs in the USA to the median of developed nations. Indeed, since the Federal government alone could cover 90% of the bill with CURRENT spending, on average individual states would experience SUBSTANTIAL SAVINGS.
Sorry, unless someone's pockets are being lined at every step of the way, don't expect it to EVER get done.
That's an excuse to do nothing about anything and you know it. We're not going to fix the problems we face doing nothing.
You're also expecting 100% participation, no recidivism, and nobody abusing the system.
...Boy, you don't know me at all.
100% participation - Why do I need this? 100% participation in what?
No recidivism - 'less likely to come back(to prison)' is certainly not 'No recidivism'. In the case of the reforms I'm looking at, it's more like reducing the current 60% return rate down to 20%.
Nobody abusing the system - Not writing a book, but I always figure on a certain level of abuse. That's what auditors and such are for, to keep that to a minimum.
I don't read AC A human right
Quite frankly, expecting us to pay the current median if we became a single payer system is silly. Right now, Americans subsidize the drugs in every other country with a single-payer system. The profits from those countries are not enough to drive drug development and research; Americans fund most of that through our very expensive drugs. If we became a single-payer system, drug prices everywhere would have to go up, or drug research would pretty much stop completely. Yeah, yeah, I know, academia does some research too (it pays my salary, after all) but good luck doing Phase III clinical trials on a lab budget.