• Climate Change

Climate Protesters Disrupting South Bend and THE Game

• divestment
• Harvard
• South Bend
• Yale

Saying he was not doing enough to combat the climate crisis in his home town of South Bend, The Hill reports that the Sunrise Movement staged a sit-in at Mayor Pete Buttigieg’s office on Friday.  And then on Saturday, students at the annual Yale-Harvard football game brought it to a halt for nearly an hour when protesters from both universities (including some of the football players) took the field in protest.

Why This Matters:  The Sunrise Movement’s new pressure on Mayor Pete shows that his move up in the Democratic pack will bring with it some additional scrutiny and criticism because his climate positions are more moderate than some of the other leading candidates.

• People

New Group Seeks to Address Harvard University’s Failure to Act on the Climate Crisis

• divestment
• fossil fuels
• Harvard

In response to widespread frustration in the Harvard community about the University’s inaction to climate change, a  coalition of alumni, students and faculty have launched a campaign called Harvard Forward to elect five new members of the Board of Overseers with the goal of changing the University’s policies on divesting from fossil fuels and on committing more resources to climate initiatives.

Why This Matters:   What makes this campaign interesting and different from previous ones (like South African divestiture in the ’80s) is that rather than protest the decisions of university leaders, this campaign is seeking the power to make the decisions themselves.  The last time the university restructured its Board of Overseers was almost 150 years ago.  It seems like its time to modernize it and addressing climate change is the perfect impetus.

• Climate Change

Read This: Desmond Tutu Calls Climate “apartheid of our times”

• divestment

Yesterday Archbishop Desmond Tutu penned an op-ed for Financial Times where he called climate change the “apartheid of our times” and urged financial institutions to rapidly divest from fossil fuels and instead support investment in renewable energy. It’s very worthy of your time.