Your Custom Text Here
April 25, 2015
Reverend Paul J. Fitzgerald, S.J.
University of San Francisco
2130 Fulton Street
San Francisco, California 94117
Dear President,
Today we are appealing to you and your goodness. We, your neighbors, your informed students and alumni, your conscientious staff and faculty, ask that USF divest from certain of the University’s holdings.
In the February 13, 2015 edition of Science, scientists warned against what it might mean if we continued to disavow the Earth’s natural limits. The authors claim that 4 of Earth’s 9 inherent boundaries have already been severely compromised, as evidenced by: massive extinction of plant and animal species; rapid eradication of forests upon which we rely for oxygen; catastrophic, erratic weather conditions that far outstrip humans’ ability to comprehend or control; as well as the poisoning of our air, land, and water through fertilizers, leaking petro-chemical contaminants, and nuclear waste.
Despite all of this, our media and politicians adamantly deny human culpability. Some deny that climate change even exists. They continue to insist that growth, at any cost, is essential to our economic system.
In just such a manner, media pundits collapse Americans’ ability to reason, and in the process, re-direct public discourse away from viable solutions (such as simpler living and alternative energy). They obfuscate pressing issues by relentlessly quoting corporate-backed “experts” in order to reinforce Americans’ dependence, if not addiction to, oil. In fact, radio, newspapers, and TV repeatedly portray American bombings of oil-rich, third-world nations as merely happenstance--a logical response to protecting America’s interests.
Ubiquitous media creations have not only enhanced individuals’ insecurities and sense of isolation, but also fostered competition, imitation and unrealistic expectations. As a result, Americans believe that certain desires are essential needs. In just such a manner, media conglomerates confuse what is expedient and profitable with that which is good. Not surprisingly, Americans not only define “intelligence” as “doing the right thing”, but equate that which is “right” with that which brings the greatest personal benefit. Now many Americans deem their own life-style to be more important than others’ very lives.
Even now, it is the for-profit media--along with national public radio, which is heavily reliant on corporations to bolster its inadequate, government grants--that repeatedly make claims about what a boon hydraulic fracturing has been. What they don’t advertise is how fracking injects toxic chemicals into ancient shale deposits, enhancing the likelihood of earthquakes and contaminating 7 million gallons of water at each site; how these cesspools will be abandoned, yet inevitably endanger underground aquifers that lie beneath them.
Gravity, an immutable law that keeps planets in their orbits around the sun itself, will force these poisons eventually downward. We can see this when air pollutants descend into the oceans, acidifying them. And while each fracked well releases high levels of methane gas (with methane emission being 84 times more potent than carbon dioxide), California, and our very oceans, are in the process of being transformed into deserts.
Yet even while plant and wildlife are extinguished around us, certain people view the environmental crisis merely as another opportunity to amass great wealth. At this very moment, investment firms are acquiring huge tracks of land in Africa to seize dwindling water reserves. And even while President Bush was adamantly denying global warming existed, the Bush family purchased one of the largest, fresh water aquifers in the world.
Not only the ambitious Bush family, but even that of Governor Brown, has ties to oil corporations. Such families cannot be expected to make neutral decisions about environmental legislation or insist on fair taxation. Can we afford to merely watch and wait, as such families, like the Koch brothers, decimate the remaining forests (as they did with one of the last remaining boreal forests while mining the Alberta tar sands)? Shouldn’t what is deemed necessary for continued life on Earth be deemed part of the Commons?
Yet instead of conservation--which would mean leaving oil and coal deposits untouched in the ground--corporations squeeze the last dollar out of any land they might access. Even if the challenge of mining bitumin oil is that it is far dirtier and thus more dangerous than conventional oil, corporate advertisers effectively deflate consumers’ resistance by lowering gas prices. To hide evidence of the thousands of oil spills contaminating our oceans, oil companies use EPA-approved chemical dispersants. To diminish concerns about nuclear power plants’ continually leaching their waste into the surrounding soil and atmosphere, they hire the chronically unemployed to clean up after nuclear disasters. To diminish the dangers of clear-cutting of the Amazon (which are the lungs of our planet), they laud McDonalds’ low prices and convenience. Their greed knows no bounds. Even now these transnational corporations, the Congress, and the President, are promulgating the next trade agreement, the TransPacific Partnership. The TPP categorizes corporations as “nation states” and would erect an international criminal court before which sovereign governments could be sued for in any way thwarting these companies’ profits. The cynicism and criminality of such endeavours is only matched by our own unwillingness to take responsibility for our human family and the greater life that surrounds us. And although these corporations are called “transnational”, they are largely American-owned. Nonetheless, they are truly transnational in that they effectively circumvent international guidelines that have been created to protect both people and the environment.
In spite of corporate financing of judges, congressmen and presidents, many fail to question the ethos of American business, for capitalism is confused with democracy itself. In fact, America’s understanding of liberty encompasses not only the Bill of Rights, but also Manifest Destiny, with its belief in American infallibility and a foreign policy characterized by ‘might makes right’. While these may be difficult subjects to comprehend due to our culture, both our dependence upon nonessential goods, as well as energy, itself, symbolize our freedom to act. For unbridled energy is liberating, exhilarating, and addictive.
Ours is a culture operated by an economic machine that has made it a business to surfeit desires. And while it is true that easy access to goods seems to have created a kind of “heaven on earth”, this is not a true paradise. While it is true that many Americans have grown less anxious, they also tend to be quiescent when it comes to striving for the betterment of something greater than themselves. For surfeited desires most often discourages self-reflection and spiritual striving, as well as community participation.
Molded into the kind of citizens who hold high expectations materially, Americans are complacent citizens: often they neither vote nor take responsibility for their government. Moreover, when not complacent, Americans’ sense of entitlement often proves to be problematic in other ways. For when individuals habituated to a certain standard of living are prevented from satisfying their desires, they are more prone to behave like drug addicts feigning for the next fix: Violent crime originate from gross economic disparity and the demise of the family; ten percent of Americans use anti-depressants; and our military budget exceeds all other nations combined.
What is wrong with this picture? Although increasingly, Americans recognize that material goods, prescription drugs, and wars of aggression neither make them safe nor happy, they watch seemingly helplessly while their nation is transformed into a third world state. They support businesses that pay both their employees and their suppliers too little, thereby supporting the Walton family, a family whose wealth equals that of 42% of the population.
Yet reorienting the society towards something truly healing and uplifting would force an upheaval of American society in itself--for such things cannot be purchased nor pillaged, as they arise mostly out of the invisible world. They include: peace (the kind that is founded on sharing and justice); love (the kind that honors the sanctity of all things); and harmony (which understands that honesty and transparency is essential for establishing trust).
Perusing your website, one cannot help but be struck by the fact that it says USF is passionate about justice. Educational justice begins with your responsibility to enhance your students’ critical thinking and writing skills, such that they might grow into informed and engaged citizens. For no one, not even at your university, is immune to the 9 media corporations’ injustice, as they control 95% of all information systems worldwide. Such a media pummels us with their relentless images, their violent films, their slanting of the news, and their “research”. They not only effectively steer people towards the internet or shopping malls. They steer them away from their own spiritual development.
Thus, beset with a situation that threatens all people’s potential, and the Planet’s very possibilities, critical thinking is of utmost importance now--should we hope to disturb America’s dangerous complacency. For a true democracy cannot be silent in the face of ruthlessness and exploitation. Rather it demands a vigilant citizenry, one that is not corrupted by corporate monies. What is at stake is more than California, more than even our nation, but the life of our beloved Planet itself.
Faced with Americans’ complacency--the kind of inaction that has been so intricately wound up with desires for things other than God--we, your neighbors, your staff, faculty, and students are joining NASA scientist Jim Hansen, to express our concerns about American-owned, energy corporations--and the institutions that invest in them, for the carbon-to-air ratio has far outstripped the 350 parts per million limit suitable for continued life on Earth. As such, we are asking that the University of San Francisco divest all of the University’s investments (including pensions and endowment funds) dealing with businesses mining, developing, processing, or selling coal, oil, natural gas, and nuclear energy.
Certainly we cannot expect to live, while we kill everything around us. As such, we ask you, “Do we have the time to redeem what is left?” Redemption of the world necessitates our advancing new definitions, which would include the understanding that Self encompasses more than “I”, “me”, and “mine”. Such an understanding of Self reveals how every thought, feeling and action has consequences. It is in just such a manner that we will come to understand how our actions influence something much greater than our unique, but limited, lives. Such an approach was what the Ancient Greeks aptly named an impersonal, yet inclusive, form of love, agape. Whereas American policies have been destructive, such love is ultimately all encompassing, more like the Divine, and it reveals how all things, all beings, are connected. For all life, and even the darkness of space, is mysterious, grand, and emblematic of a greater Design. Even many scientists (that is, those who believe that humans’ perceptions can attain objectivity through repeated observations of the physical world) cannot help but be awed by the beauty and vastness of the universe, a universe pervaded by indestructible energy and immutable laws. In fact, all physical life requires energy to express itself. Symbolically, perhaps, this is why it is so frightening for Americans to imagine that our access to conventional, energy sources might be limited--and why so many Americans deny the seriousness of what we face. Such feelings of powerlessness may also inspire others to deny how dangerous our some of our tools--like nuclear power plants with their depleted uranium munitions, their overheating reactors that no waters can cool, their rusting metal storage drums, their radiation that permeates all that we know.
Because of the seriousness of the times in which we live, we expect more from the University. In the past, it was the Jesuits who embraced the Classical Greeks’ desire to understand all that encompasses human life, who equated such curiosity with a love of God, for each small bird and insect was deemed to be beyond human knowing, an emblem of the Infinite. Certainly, if one has the strength to be both sensitive and just, then one must feel moved to act, to protect not only life but that which has been given to us, that which is most vulnerable, subtle, and invisible.
Recently some important changes have occurred in our struggle for justice. Stanford has divested from coal, although this may partly be due to the fact that such investments are proving unprofitable. Students at Harvard, with its $31 billion endowment, are denouncing their schools’ fossil fuel investments as signifying that their university is failing to keep abreast with the sweeping changes characterizing our present period in history.
Although the University of California Regents only began to discuss divestiture from the petro-chemical industry last year, we have learned from their past protests. For example, on April 10th, 1985, merely three dozen UC Berkeley students organized a sit-in to raise awareness about the UC Regents’ support of apartheid South Africa. Their tiny sit-in would burgeon into a rally at Sproul (a.k.a., Steve Biko) plaza, with 156 protesters experiencing arrest. This small confrontation would later inspire a University-wide boycott, with tens of thousands of staff, faculty and students joining.
Diverse actions were to be staged over the next year, including 1500 demonstrators marching before a Board of Trustees’ meeting, carrying coffins, and chanting, “Apartheid kills while UC counts its dollar bills!” These actions would lead to 400 people being arrested. Then, late into the night of April 4th, 1986, after the police had pulled down the shanty town which students had erected outside the Chancellor’s home, a melee broke out. In response to shameful, police beatings, students barricaded themselves behind burning dumpsters and hurled rocks, bottles, and molotov cocktails.
Although these conflicts turned violent, they inspired the then Republican governor, Deukmejian, to make an uncharacteristic and dramatic decision. Within 3 months, he compelled the Board of Regents to divest its 3.1 billion dollars of holdings in South Africa. He also signed Maxine Water’s legislation to divest the state teachers and public employee pension funds, which were worth $8.3 billion dollars. (This action seems to have been a tipping point, spurring not only divestment nationwide, but also some of America’s largest and most powerful corporations to relinquish doing business in South Africa.)
Four years later, and four months after his release from the prison where he did 27 years hard labor, Nelson Mandela would speak at the Oakland Coliseum in June of 1990. Before an audience of thousands, he expressed his deep gratitude to the students of UC Berkeley, the California longshore men, Rosa Parks, and Ron Dellums.
Ron Dellum’s efforts to enact US sanctions on South Africa actually had begun in 1971. But it took 15 years before this bill would have enough backing in the US Congress to defy President Reagan’s veto. The unfortunate thing is that we don’t have 15 years to ponder important changes that could be made to help the environment. In fact, the international climate scientists who convened in Durban, South Africa in 2011, stated that we had only 5-7 years to institute sweeping changes in environmental regulations and public policy--before irreparably harming the planet--and thereby threatening our very own existence.
Today, we need to recognize that Nature is presenting us with an ultimatum. Do we change our behavior, which includes how we invest our time and money? Or do we ignore the fact that what we do to the Planet, we ultimately do to ourselves?
We recognize that requesting divestment may not be a small nor ordinary request. For it strikes at issues around identity. And issues around identity are at the core of all life, not only of individuals, but also of nations and institutions. The question for you will be is USF primarily a religious institution, an educational institution, or a business?
As always, we need to question our motivations, our actions, and what we set in motion. We realize that changing our behavior, our assumptions, and our habits are not easy. Yet we can learn by returning to our reading of the very first chapter of the Old Testament, when the role of humans is clarified as that of being good stewards to the plant and animal world. Underscoring the importance of this idea, Jesus was often portrayed as the good shepherd, gently and lovingly attending to his sheep.
And should USF act as the present times demand, we imagine that other secular, educational institutions might adopt similar behavior. For knowledge, as your venerable educational institution understands, is responsibility. Words are insufficient. As such, knowledge compels us to act. Harkening to the times when clergy practiced liberation theology in Central and South America in the face of American-backed juntas’ who did not hesitate to murder for their corporate elites, we must ask: “Can Americans continue feeding wants and habits founded on power, violence, and greed? Who are we, if we do? And if so, what will become of us?” For should humans turn the Earth into an uninhabitable wasteland, decimating it for millions of years to come, we will not only destroy all higher potentials that have been offered us, but we will be held responsible for that devastation, according to the Law of God and of Science (that is, the Law of Cause and Effect, or the Law of Karma).
Conversely, love, as displayed by the Christ, has an energy and life of its own. Christ’s love continues to nourish us and redirect us today. When Jesus chased the money changers out of the temple, He was showing how even the most sacrosanct places could be defiled by materialism. Uncharacteristically, He made a display of anger: For nothing less would reestablish a boundary at the church’s gates.
As such, we are hoping that we can appeal to your highest selves to reestablish a boundary, and divest from the coal, oil, natural gas, and nuclear industries. Saving the Planet is the supra-ordinate goal of our time, one that demands the cooperation of all people, no matter how young or old, how weak or powerful. We, as your neighbors, your staff, faculty, students and alumni, would ask you to reestablish such a boundary within your investment and endowment portfolios. For you are expected to function as an educational institution that upholds a sacred mandate. What is at stake includes the lives of all you know and cherish.
Sincerely yours,
Ariane Eroy, Ph. D.