DU Media DU Media showcases DU MFJS student content
By Maya Greer and Camila Conchas Garcia
On Dec. 2nd, 2022, an orange wave crashed into the University of Colorado Boulder’s Memorial Center. Armed with protest signs, megaphones, and even life-size puppets, students clad in bright orange hats and vests called loudly and repeatedly for the school’s administration to grant them one crucial thing: full divestment from fossil fuels.
Students at the University of Colorado (CU) have been fighting to see their school cease its investment in fossil fuel companies since 2013, calling for greater accountability from an institution with a stated dedication to fighting climate change that paradoxically has over $270 million dollars invested in fossil fuels. In nearly a decade of activism, they’ve fielded multiple setbacks and even outright rejection from university administration.
Despite the uphill battle, they’re not alone; divestment is gaining steam among university students seeking climate action from their institutions statewide. Students at Colorado State University (CSU) recently launched a divestment movement in Oct. 2022 with the help of environmental group 350 Colorado. Additionally, Divest DU, the student divestment movement at the University of Denver (DU), was allowed to meet with the university’s chancellor and key trustees in Feb. 2022, and has begun participating in the Fridays for Futures protests popularized by the Global Climate Strike movement in the new year.
Winter is a season that exposes Colorado’s heavy, concerning reliance on its fossil fuel reserves. 2023’s unprecedented snowstorms and brutal below-zero temperatures have slammed in one after another, making the season especially difficult for Colorado residents and central heating systems. Colorado State University has reported that since 2021, 41.6% of electricity being generated in Colorado has been derived from natural gas reserves and 25.5.% has been derived from burning coal. Colorado holds 3% of the United States’ crude oil reserves. Weld County in the Front Range is the home of Wattenberg Field, the fourth-largest oil field in the United States. Colorado is also the eighth-largest producer of natural gas nationally. The San Juan and Raton Basins, intersecting between Colorado and New Mexico, produce the majority Colorado’s coalbed methane (a natural gas derived from coal seams).
The primary way Colorado is able to produce the astronomical amounts of natural gas and oil it consumes is through fracking. Fracking is the process of fluid (such as crude oil) being extracted from underground by high-volume fracturing pumps, in a process colloquially known as ‘fracking’.
There are many concerns when it comes to fracking. Sites where fracking has taken place can release numerous chemicals into the air that have been known to cause headaches, asthma symptoms, childhood leukemia, cardiac problems and more. According to Claire Steffek, student president of Divest DU, “In 2018 alone, more than 8 million people died globally from the burning of fossil fuels.” Along with health hazards, there are environmental concerns–fracking’s extensive construction sites cause habitat loss, and poisonous runoff can decimate local aquatic populations.
According to Colorado’s governor Jared Polis, gas bills have increased by 75% on-average since last year, compounded by the fact that Coloradans believe this winter has been the coldest yet. In order to lessen the use of gas and coal to keep people warm, Polis plans for the state to use 100% renewable energy by 2040, as an update to his ongoing plan to use 80% of renewable energy by 2030.
This plan is an ambitious disruption of a massive industry, and one many other industries rely on through investment. Many of Colorado’s high-profile institutions are tied, in some way or another, to the fossil fuel industry–oil and gas investment has the potential to produce significant capital gain, especially at a point when gas is expensive and likely to stay that way.
Institutions like universities especially, which require a certain amount of fickle public or private funding to function, often survive on a diverse investment portfolio as a secondary source of income. In the past decade, DU has invested over $24 million into the industry and CSU has invested over $10 million. In Colorado, effective investing means investing in fossil fuels.
However, universities don’t just have their shareholders to answer to: they’re also accountable to their students. More than 40% of Generation Z considers climate change the world’s top priority, and a growing amount, especially in fossil fuel-rich Colorado, are unhappy with the administration of their school funding and therefore encouraging the continued use of fossil fuels.
Riley Ruff, the northern Colorado coordinator with the Divest CSU movement, notes the hypocrisy inherent to her school’s endowment. “There is such a stark lack of transparency between how CSU portrays itself and how they actually show up in the world,” she said. “We want to change that.”
The desire not to have an ethical compromise made for you isn’t new, but the wave of climate change awareness in incoming college students has given rise to current prominence movements throughout the country. Along with the movements across Colorado, there are over 60 student groups nationwide demanding that their universities divest from fossil fuels in order to align with the futures and values of their students.
“There is a lack of transparency the administration has given specifically in how they are using the money we are giving them, the money the trustees give them”
Colorado universities have often been opaque or outright dismissive with students about their financial activities surrounding fossil fuels. “There is a lack of transparency the administration has given specifically in how they are using the money we are giving them, the money the trustees give them,” Ruth Nowotny, the outreach coordinator for Mission Zero (the divestment group at CU) said. “The school thinks it’s okay for them to run us over, time and time again, with how they handle the money that’s supposed to be used to make our lives better.”
Change at the university level has been gradual to a frustrating degree for many student activists. Steffeck described Divest DU’s demands being rejected by DU’s board of trustees multiple times, with little justification and little care towards the urgency of their arguments. Ruff, when asked about challenges to the movement, said “It’s taken nearly 8 months to start seeing people activating consistently around divestment.”
Student activists explaining their participation in Divest DU. Source: DU Media on YouTube
DU students also raise another ethical concern: Given the disparate racial impact of climate change and other environmental issues, divestment pertains at least partially to social justice. “A lot of fossil fuel companies were built on stolen Indigenous land, just as the University of Denver,” said Steffek. “So DU has a responsibility to take concrete steps to show that it is not what it once was in the past.”
However, there are some arguments against outright divestment. According to the Independent Petroleum Association of America, divestment is a primarily symbolic gesture that would do more harm than good: a broad divestment plan could result in a $646 billion dollar loss for the state over the next fifty years, jeopardizing finances and Colorado’s welfare state.
The necessity, morality, and future of fossil fuels remains a difficult debate, and the center of that future is, as always, defined by young people. Nowotny believes that movements like Mission Zero can be extremely productive in fostering an environment where students are not afraid to speak up for themselves and others: “We’re working against what the school has decided is the correct thing,” she said. “Students have to be empowered to realize when authority is acting poorly, unjustly, or affecting people who may not be within their circle.”
While change may not be immediate, divestment groups are only growing, and their numbers betray a passion for the environment and social responsibility that may go beyond what many university administrators see as viable. “This is something the university is scared of. This is something that has power over them.” said Nowotny.
As the impact of climate change becomes clearer and more severe, Colorado and its institutions have a choice to make. But as far as Colorado’s ecologically and politically involved students go, the choice is already obvious; if young people are the future, then divestment has a significant chance of being a part of it.
“I’m grateful for everyone I’ve met, worked with, and been inspired by,” said Steffek, in reference to her experience with the organization. “and I encourage others to join this important movement to fight for a better world.”
