A group of Oxford Students is protesting that their school invests in oil. They are climate change advocates that feel Oxford should not be supporting the oil industry. The students have sent demands to the principal and received a wake-up call of a response.
“Oxford students have occupied St. John’s College since Wednesday, demanding that the College divests its £8.1 million of disclosed investments in fossil fuel companies and all undisclosed fossil fuel investments from its £551 million endowments.
Dozens of students have set up camp in the front quad of St. John’s equipped with banners and placards, to demand that it takes the climate emergency seriously and measures to remove the social license of fossil fuel companies.”
“Two students at St John’s College wrote to Andrew Parker, the principal bursar, this week requesting a meeting to discuss the protesters’ demands, which are that the college “declares a climate emergency and immediately divests from fossil fuels.” They say that the college, the richest in Oxford, has £8 million of its £551 million endowment fund invested in BP and Shell.
Professor Parker responded with a provocative offer. “I am not able to arrange any divestment at short notice,” he wrote. “But I can arrange for the gas central heating in college to be switched off with immediate effect. Please let me know if you support this proposal.”
“…A graduate student fittingly named Fergus Green, heard and responded to Parker, calling his suggestion “borderline dangerous.”
“This is an inappropriate and flippant response by the bursar to what we were hoping would be a mature discussion,” Green blasted. “It’s January and it would be borderline dangerous to switch off the central heating.”
“The Guardian reports that 78 out of 154 UK universities have committed to removing their investments in fossil fuels, including most recently, Balliol.
However, Oxford and many colleges continue to maintain their investments in fossil fuels.”
These Climate Change Activists just don’t realize that our civilization revolves around fossil fuels. It is going to take time for us to move over to more green solutions that make us less reliant on OPEC. Demands do not change things. If they truly wanted to do something they should raise money to help buy the school solar panel or a wind turbine, seeing that they are in the U.K.
Well it makes perfectly good sense to me for these not very wise environmental minds, to show them the unintended consequences of their demands. They want fossil fuels to go away but not the advantages they get from them! Typical…..they want us to suffer….not them. I don’t think the Bursar was being flippant by showing them the reality of divesting itself (the school) of fossil fuels. What is the plan for heating the school and student housing? Bet these students don’t have one!
Kudos for the bursar
what a bunch of jack(democrats)asses!
I didn’t know there was a Democrat Party in Merry Old England.
Liberals are Liberals, Über Alles.
turn it off!
1. Students are in no position to DEMAND anything.
2. Throwing a tantrum is not the proper way to accomplish one’s goals.
3. Society has for too long given in to tantrum-throwers such as Mohandas Gandhi, Martin Luther King Jr., Nelson Mandela, and the rest, thereby encouraging other malcontents to throw tantrums instead of making their wishes known in the proper manner.
I wish you were right, but as been proven here in the US, college administrators at liberal schools have often shown no backbone in standing up to leftist demands. I hope the Oxford administration doesn’t fold.
If they feel so strongly, they should withdraw from the evil institution. Their tuitions support the school.
I’d go along with you except the 3rd item is all wrong. Those people became famous for going about change the right way.
Turn off all the electricity to the buildings, take away all their bus passes, cars, motorcycles and scooters. Force them to go hunting & forging for food. Make them study by candle light, no ink pens just #2 pencils with a manual sharpener. No lap tops, no cell phones or tablets.
Just what are you suggesting? Do you want them to return to the time when many of their 17th to 18th century or older buildings were constructed?
YES!
Thanks.
A good solution for the Luddite students.
They do not deserve a degree from Oxford if they are that stupid. Any normal person can see climate change is a hoax.
It’s not the Intellegence level that determines if one believes in climate change. It really is changing, but the reason has nothing to do with mankind in any way. The earth’s climate will continue to oscillate from hot to cold and back until the earth is destroyed. The earth’s rotation and changing axis around the sun is constantly changing causing both the distance and angle of our orbit around the sun to cyclamately change from nearer and farther and so on and so forth. Since 2007, climatologists are saying the earth, in general, is cooling and showing the polar caps are again getting thicker, even as some ice further from the center of the polar ice cap is somewhat melting. The Antarctica polar cap is getting thicker and more ice is forming. It will take many hundreds of thousands or perhaps millions of years to complete each cycle, do don’t hold your breath waiting for a heat wave that melts all the ice or another ice age. It took millions of years for the earth to have the many ice ages that existed.
These “students” are obviously not smart enough to be going to Oxford. Their demands should be ignored and they should be required to go back to classes.
Another solution would put their tuitions in a school that reflects their needs.
Perhaps they should raise tuition with each divestment of fossil fuel equities.
Nah, that only hurts their parents. Close down the Starbucks instead.
I would have added to the Bursar’s suggestion that ALL Tuition costs would be DOUBLED immediately and must be paid in full within 10 days. That should wake up the Idiots.
Those attacking the use of gas and oil as usual ignore the facts, history, and reality. They might want to take the time to learn what happened in Southern Australia – rolling blackouts due to no wind and sun light. The “Man Made Climate Change” mantra is used to impose the “Progressive” agenda of “Supremacy of the State and Supremacy of those in control of the State”. It has nothing to do with the environment or even pollution. And CO2 increases will benefits the plants and thus improve plant based food production, which will interfere with the “Progressive” agenda of control as well since people will have more food available.
What do you know ……. more STUPID college students.
The earth has been going thru heating and cooling cycles for about the last 4.5 billion or more years. I highly doubt that we humans have had much affect on the earths temperature.. NOW, if you want to talk about human caused litter and pollution on the earth, that’s a cause I can get behind and support. So go out and pick up your trash, you pigs.
UK forget OPEC call the U.S.A. we will sell you all the LNG ,OIL,GASOLINE & DIESEL you want.
I would suggest that they offer to get a people powered generator perhaps like a bicycle built for a dozen at a time to volunteer to heat their schools and residencies, while wind power and sun power was installed to take over, take a year or two but what the heck, think of all green house gases they would be saving.. And then they would be really contributing to their cause
These are the same people that drive their cars to an anti-oil protests. Talk about stupid leftists, they take the cake.