Climate change group calls for colleges to sever lobbyist ties

Climate change alarmism is alive and well in higher education and in left-wing activist circles. A climate change group called F Minus demands that higher education institutions divest their investments from the fossil fuel industry.

Higher Ed Dive noted that F Minus’s executive director, James Browning, is a former lobbyist himself. Browning claimed that when colleges hire lobbyists who have oil and gas industry ties, it impacts the alleged climate crisis “far greater than anything the school is doing locally.” He added, “These are the people locking us into further dependence on oil and gas at a time when we just have to exit fossil fuels as quickly as possible.”

The group singled out Johns Hopkins University, a private university located in Baltimore, Maryland, for hiring lobbyists with oil and gas industry ties. Specifically, the group criticized the university for hiring lobbyists who work for Koch Industries. One of F Minus’s board members is an executive director for the anti-Koch group UnKoch My Campus.

Koch Industries is owned by the wealthy libertarian Koch family and is involved in fossil fuels.

Another university named by F Minus, University of Washington, said that it works with lobbyist Stephen Buckner and that it has no issues with his other work in fossil fuels. University spokesperson said, “His contracts with other clients have never presented a conflict of interest. Furthermore, one individual’s work for another entity does not outweigh the significant impact that UW researchers have made to address the climate crisis or other steps the University has taken itself.”

The University of Washington said it will divest from fossil fuels by 2027.

But the overall problem with divesting from fossil fuels is that the return on investment tends to be greater with fossil fuels and there is no clear or pragmatic energy alternative to fossil fuels. Yet the climate change alarmists will not acknowledge these realities.

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