Why divestment is more symbolic than effective

Home In All Lands: Approach danger calmly and rationally

“Life is hard,” goes the saying, “and then you die.” It’s a succinct and blunt way to express that life is dangerous. In the last year (thanks to the highly excitable media) you may have gotten the impression that life is more dangerous than it used to be.
Ebola, the sudden rise of Daesh (more commonly called ISIS), the disappearance of Malaysian Airlines flight 370, the conflict in Ukraine: all these give the impression that our world is more fractured, violent and deadly than ever before.
To be honest, I’m somewhat unsure as to why everyone is freaking out. For one thing, the world isn’t necessarily more dangerous. More unstable, certainly, but death hides amongst everyday occurrences.
The daily commute to work puts you at risk of being one of the approximately 34,000 killed on U.S. roads every year. Death by scalding, falling or drowning can await you in the bathroom. Forgetting to empty the lint filter on your dryer could lead to a fire that destroys your house and you with it.
I don’t mean to be overly moribund, but we have to face the facts: even the most humdrum facets of our lives can bring about an untimely demise. After all, on average two people a year die from being crushed by vending machines.
So why, if death is so ubiquitous, are we so afraid of the “Ebolas” of this world? It may have something to do with something called “the safety paradox.” Essentially, we are afraid because we are no longer accustomed to danger, to death.
As Hans Boutellier describes in his book, “De Veiligheidsutopie” (“The Safety Utopia”), the safer a country and society, the more frightened its people are. We are scared of Ebola, of Daesh, of terrorism because we have no control over their outcomes.
Although, for example, driving puts you at risk of being killed, you feel safer in a car because there are many factors that you can control to reduce the likelihood of death. You can buy a car that performs well in crash tests. You can put your seatbelt on before you set off. If the weather turns for the worse, you can adapt to the changing conditions.
In other words, as Carola Houtekamer and Arlen Poort explain in their article “A safe country is a scared land,” we take solace in being able to control a small part of our fate. “Terror,” they suggest, “is like having a dark thundercloud above you. You cannot help but ask yourself if you will be struck by lightning.” (Lightning accounts for about 30 deaths a year in the U.S.) Like dying in a terrorist attack, the likelihood of being struck by lightning at any point in your life is infinitesimally small (1 in 12,000). Getting hysterical about odds that small is meaningless and will do nothing to improve your chances of controlling the outcome.
You could, of course, quit your job, pack up your house, and move to a remote corner west of nowhere in the hope that nothing bad will ever happen to you. Aside from the fact that your house is essentially a death-trap, you could be pretty safe. And even if you survive, quip Houtekamer and Poort, “That’s a sure-fire way to ruin your life.”
When it comes to terrorism, organizations like Daesh thrive on the confusion and violence of fear. According to Edwin Bakker, “terrorism-induced hysteria is itself an invitation to be terrorized.” Unfortunately, this particular symptom is readily apparent in the U.S., where the specter of 9/11 still looms large.
This does not mean to say that we shouldn’t be vigilant about terrorism. We should anticipate the worst but, in our actions, show that we expect the best. The same should be said for Ebola and other calamities. Needless worry benefits no one—calm, careful and considerate thought is what we need in a time of crisis.

Home In All Lands: Why everyone should be allowed to donate blood, including gay men

Thirty-five million people around the world live with HIV, including over one million Americans. One-tenth of global patients are children, the majority of whom contracted HIV in the womb. Although anti-retroviral drugs (ARVs) have significantly reduced annual mortality rates, HIV/AIDS is still responsible for a staggering number of annual deaths.
In 2013, an estimated 1.5 million people died from AIDS-related causes; that’s greater than the population of Maine. Thirty years after French and American researchers identified HIV, the retrovirus that causes AIDS, we are still far from finding a cure. With World AIDS Day just ten days away, we have an opportunity not only to take stock of HIV’s massive toll, but also to pledge ourselves to fight the disease and the discrimination that has accompanied it since its discovery.
One of the biggest problems facing AIDS awareness campaigners is getting the message out about the devastating impact of the disease. According to my calculations based on information from the Center for Disease Control, on average more people die from HIV/AIDS in a week than have died in all of human history from Ebola, SARS, avian flu and swine flu combined. However, the attention-deficient media industry only focuses on “exciting” illnesses. These diseases deserve coverage, and we are right to be concerned about the latest pandemics. Media coverage of pandemics, unfortunately, is not driven by public interest. It seeks out the flavor of the day to the detriment of illnesses such as HIV, hepatitis and diabetes.
Take Ebola, for example. The likelihood of contracting Ebola in the United States is 1 in 13 million. By contrast, the CDC estimates that the risk of contracting HIV/AIDS, depending on the type of contact, varies from six in 1000 (from sharing needles) to one in 100 (for unprotected anal sex) to one in 1000 (unprotected vaginal sex). I suspect that part of the media aversion to discussing HIV has to do with its primary mode of transmission, sexual contact.
When doctors first noticed that gay men in San Francisco and New York had compromised immune systems, they treated it as a “gay-only” disease. In the press, the term GRID (gay-related immunodeficiency) gained traction. As a response to the prevalence of HIV among men who have sex with men (MSM), the FDA prohibited blood donations from homosexual males beginning in 1977. Eventually it became apparent that anyone, regardless of gender or sexuality, could get AIDS.
In spite of this, the FDA has not reversed its ban. On November 13, a panel advised the US Department of Health and Human Services (the parent agency of the FDA) to partially reverse the ban for homosexual males, provided they were celibate for at least a year.
Although this was hailed in some circles as a step forward, it is anything but. As Human Rights Campaign Director David Stacy remarked, the policy change “continues to stigmatize gay and bisexual men, preventing them from donating life-saving blood based solely on their sexual orientation.”
I can understand the FDA’s caution: after all, MSM are statistically more likely to contract HIV. “The problem is that ‘high-risk’ should not be defined as ‘gay,’” commented Jamie Weisbach ’16. Indeed, high-risk behaviors do not permanently exclude heterosexuals from giving blood. Why should the opposite be true for MSM?
Given that we can now identify HIV much more quickly, it is not beyond the capacity of medical technology to “quarantine” blood while testing for disease. The standard HIV tests used to determine the presence or absence of the virus take up to of 3 weeks, well within the 6-week period that blood can be refrigerated. In addition to screenings for diseases like malaria, TB and typhoid, the American Red Cross also screens for HIV. Thus the fear that MSM may donate blood that is infected is already accounted for in standard donation procedures.
To be blunt, allowing MSM to donate blood won’t solve frequent blood shortages faced by hospitals across this country. It will reverse a discriminatory practice that is medically unsound and provide an opportunity to educate people about HIV/AIDS. Without a reliable supply of blood donations, nine people would die every minute in the US alone. By opening blood donations to people of all sexual orientations, we can help save lives now.

Home In All Lands

Why divestment is more symbolic than effective

This piece represents the opinion of the author:

Jean-Paul Honegger

Columnist

November 6, 2014

As you may have read last Friday, the Orient investigated irregularities in the petitions circulated by Bowdoin Climate Action (BCA), a student group “dedicated to climate justice by campaigning for fossil fuel divestment.”

In a scathing editorial, the Orient editorial board questioned the circumstances under which BCA was able to meet with the Board of Trustees earlier this year. Although in a subsequent statement BCA denied ever claiming a “mandate” from the students, the group nevertheless used its petitions as leverage to meet with the Trustees.

I am not saying I oppose the idea of BCA meeting with the Trustees. We certainly have the right to petition the highest decision-making body at the College when it comes to important issues. What I challenge is not just BCA’s methods but also the very cause for which it stand: divestment.

To be clear, like BCA, I believe that the effects of climate change have been worsened by human activity. Like BCA, I also believe that reducing atmospheric pollution and seeking ways to remove existing pollutants is the best approach to facing this challenge. We differ, however, when it comes to how to meet these goals.

Divestment proponents argue that divesting from fossil fuel companies will put pressure on the industry to act more forcefully against climate change. Although the basic logic behind divestment is valid and has been tested in other cases before (big tobacco, apartheid in South Africa), the financial clout of energy companies reduces the impact that divestment would have.

According to a report from the University of Oxford, “of the $12 trillion assets under management among university endowments and public pension funds—the likely universe of divestment candidates—the plausible upper limit of possible equity divestment for oil and gas companies is in the range of $240-$600 billion.”

For the average person, this amount of money is staggering. But it isn’t for the major fossil fuel companies of the world. Companies like ExxonMobil, BHP Billiton (the world’s largest mining company) and BP have $400 billion, $191 billion and $133 billion, respectively, in market capitalization (total value of shares).

If Bowdoin divested its fossil fuel holdings tomorrow, the impact on the College would be far greater than the impact on the energy companies concerned.

“[Bowdoin] would need to redeem from almost 40 percent of [its] portfolio investments [because] the endowment [is invested] in commingled funds, not individual securities,” Paula Volent, senior vice president for investments, wrote to me in an email this week. Essentially, commingled funds are collections of assets derived from various sources, which allows investors to diversify beyond individual securities.

Ultimately, this distinction is important. Although BCA argues that “Bowdoin should [divest] the Bowdoin way,” the group cites Stanford University as one example of successful divestment. However, Stanford was invested directly in coal companies, whereas the College’s investments are indirect.

Another difficulty for divestment is that finding commingled funds free of fossil fuel revenues is tricky, in part because oil, coal and gas companies provide good dividends and good return on investment, making them attractive prospects for many investors. This complexity explains why divesting could cost the College “upwards of $400 million” over the next ten years, according to an estimate made by Volent.

In a study of Pomona College, investment advisory firm Cambridge Associates found that Pomona would have to reduce endowment spending by at least $6 million annually and would lose endowment value to a degree similar to Volent’s estimate. These numbers aren’t just conjecture or fear-mongering; they are based on sound financial assessments. Instead of supporting all-out divestment, the College should consider other ways to tackle climate change.

For example, Associate Professor of Economics Guillermo Herrera proposed last week that the College should consider a self-imposed carbon tax, which would encourage us to reduce our emissions. The money collected from such a tax could be used to fund research into green technology like tidal electricity and carbon capture, or local, environmentally friendly projects. These are concrete steps that the College and the community can take to tackle climate change. Divestment, by contrast, is a largely symbolic gesture. We will not find the change we need by hurting the health of this College. No matter how small, tangible efforts to reduce emissions are the way forward in this long fight against climate change.

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