Carbon Neutrality

Letter to the editor: Movember

MovemberTo the Editors:Just because I can’t grow a mustache doesn’t mean that I don’t support Movember and prostate cancer awareness. Sincerely,Peter Powers ’16Ordained MinisterClass D Licensed Driver
To the Editors:
Just because I can’t grow a mustache doesn’t mean that I don’t support Movember and prostate cancer awareness.
Sincerely,Peter Powers ’16Ordained MinisterClass D Licensed Driver

Letter to the editor: BCF Advisors

To the Editor,
I read with horror the article “BCF advisors refuse to sign policy, vacate role at College” in the Orient (February 14). First, the attack on religious freedom is picking up steam in American and now has landed full force at my alma mater. Second, the article is so deviously slanted against Rob and Sim Gregory that I must write to defend them. Are we really supposed to believe the monster from Penn State, Jerry Sandusky, should be used as any example, a connection or even anywhere in the same article as the exemplary Christian leaders Rob and Sim Gregory? Also, it is obvious that the Gregorys were effectively banned from their role and that they did not “vacate” their leadership at Bowdoin.No one from Bowdoin thought up a new document for people to sign just to protect the kids from the next Jerry Sandusky. Monsters like Sandusky would have signed the document!
Rather, they conjured up a way to get Christians off the campus. They knew that Rob and Sim Gregory could never sign it, as they have their Bible, not the director of “religious and spiritual life” for counsel.
Thank you Rob and Sim for bringing so many people to Christ. I only wish you both were at Bowdoin in leadership positions when I was a student!
The religious war on Christianity is picking up speed in America and we better get prepared to fight back.
Sincerely,Stephen P. Laffey ’84

Letter to the editor

January 24, 2014

Correction, January 28: The third paragraph has been changed to note that climate policies will "batter" the earnings of coal, oil, and gas companies, not "better" them.

Bowdoin College should be commended for its efforts to decrease its carbon footprint and become carbon neutral by 2020.

“It’s about addressing the issue of climate change and how that’s part of Bowdoin’s overall mission of serving the common good,” said Keisha Payson, coordinator for a Sustainable Bowdoin, in a September 2013 Orient article.

Next, the College needs to step up and divest from the fossil fuel industry that deceives the public, denies science and blocks solutions. To grasp the seriousness of the climate crisis, we just need to do a little math. Fossil fuel corporations have five times more oil, coal and gas in known reserves than climate scientists think is safe to burn. We have to keep 80 percent of their fossil fuels underground to keep the earth in livable shape. The industry needs to pledge to keep its reserves underground and to put its vast financial resources toward developing alternative energy sources. What is needed is an entire new business model.

Bowdoin’s investment office estimates that divesting would ultimately cause the College to lose $100 million over the next ten years. Other analysts see a quite different picture. There is increased talk of a carbon bubble with the growing recognition that 80 percent of reserves are unusable if we are to avoid runaway climate change. In a move that underscores Wall Street’s growing unease over the business-as-usual strategy of the world’s fossil fuel companies, Bloomberg L.P. unveiled a tool last week that helps investors quantify for the first time how climate policies and related risks might batter the earnings and stock prices of individual oil, coal and natural gas companies.

Daniel M. Kammen, a distinguished professor of energy at the University of Californina, Berkeley writes, “In the case of fossil fuel investments, divesting is not only the moral thing to do but is also financially prudent. As fossil fuel companies continue expanding their search for more hydrocarbons, the world’s carbon budget is shrinking. From Canadian tar sands to shale oil, the bottom of the barrel is proving to be increasingly dirty. When government regulation aligns with this reality—and it must—the vast majority of reserves will have to stay in the ground unburned, rendering them stranded assets. Remaining invested in fossil fuels is a bad bet all around.”

Now is an opportune time for Bowdoin to divest from the fossil fuel industry, to be doing the morally and financially right thing, and to be on the right side of history. As President Barry Mills has said about climate change to students: “Stay involved, only sustained commitment will make a difference.”

Billy Ruxin

Freeport

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