By Catelyn Fitzgerald ’23
Science & Environment Editor
In a letter shared with the community on Oct. 18, Mount Holyoke President Sonya Stephens outlined several new “climate action commitments,” including the decisions to divest from fossil fuels and take steps toward carbon neutrality. The letter was sent via email soon after the Board of Trustees’ October meeting. In addition to announcing new commitments and initiatives, Stephens enumerated past actions taken by the College towards achieving the recommendations of the Sustainability Task Force, which convened in 2017. The Task Force’s recommendations were approved by the Board of Trustees in 2018. They included achieving carbon neutrality by 2037, improving the energy efficiency of campus buildings and utilizing the campus as a “living laboratory for cross-disciplinary teaching, research and learning.”
CJC discusses divestment
Divestment from fossil fuels had long been fought for by student groups on campus, most prominently by the Climate Justice Coalition. In February 2020, the CJC held a sit-in at Blanchard Hall to protest the College’s investments in fossil fuels. More recently, they hung a banner from the Mt. Holyoke Summit House on Mountain Day that read, “divest from fossil fuels, invest in our future” and hosted an email writing campaign before the Board of Trustees met in October. On these actions, CJC member Dino Schipper ’22 commented, “we were just trying to do as much as we could so that [Stephens] and the Board of Trustees couldn’t ignore it.” Schipper added that the organization also had occasional communication with the Board of Trustees prior to the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, but that it had not been fruitful.
Stephens’ letter announced to the community that the College would withdraw all of its investments in fossil fuels within the next decade. According to the letter, the College has been investing in sustainable technologies, such as solar mini-grids and compostable packaging, since 2014.
This is not the first time the College has rerouted its investments to have a more ethical impact. According to The Associated Press, in 1985 the Board of Trustees voted to pull out all investments from companies that were based in or did business with South Africa in protest of the country’s state of apartheid.
On Oct. 20, the CJC shared their response to Stephens’ email, saying they are “ecstatic that Mount Holyoke College has finally committed to phasing out investments in fossil fuels.” To ensure that the commitments made by the College see full realization, the CJC made several demands, which they shared in the full statement. The demands include, but are not limited to: regular updates to the student body after Board of Trustees meetings, a concrete timeline for divestment and a reinvestment of the fossil fuel funds into communities “most harmed by the fossil fuel industry,” the statement reads.
In a statement to the Mount Holyoke News, the group said that they “would like to know if [the Board of Trustees] are actively working to divest or simply allowing the investments to fizzle out.”
“While the College has indicated an interest in and intention towards climate justice, CJC wants to emphasize that climate justice does not exist without racial justice. Additionally, they have by no means met our demands — divestment within 5 years — or the demands of marginalized people most impacted by climate change on campus — specifically, providing material support to students of color, particularly to Black and Indigenous students and community members,” the CJC said. “There is still a lot to push for divestment from, and a lot of things that fall under climate justice, so our work is far from over.”
The CJC’s commitment to holding the College accountable sets the tone for their future as an organization.
“We will continue to fight for transparency in the divestment process,” they asserted in their initial response to the letter. Schipper added that the CJC formed a working group tasked with contacting Stephens and the Board of Trustees to seek more clarity on the specifics of the College’s divestment plan.
While the CJC is far from finished with taking action on divestment, according to Schipper, they have begun to branch out into new territory. The organization recently formed new working groups devoted to food justice and political education. “What we’re working towards has shifted,” Schipper commented, adding that the CJC’s membership has “close to doubled in size” in comparison to recent years, allowing for the organization’s focus to broaden.
College aims for carbon neutrality
When addressing the goal to achieve carbon neutrality, Stephens’ letter primarily addressed past and in-process steps taken by the College. According to the letter, renovations to campus buildings, such as the installation of new windows in Ham and MacGregor halls, were part of a multi-million dollar investment made by the College to transform Mount Holyoke’s built environment to support this goal. Additional steps towards carbon neutrality include the replacement of 30 percent of College-owned vehicles with hybrids and the establishment of the Green Revolving Fund, which is used for green energy investments.
Community commits to climate justice
The third focus of the letter was on the announcement of the Community Commitment to Climate Justice, which officially launched on Nov. 4. The CC2CJ will be spearheaded by the Miller Worley Center for the Environment. Olivia Aguilar, professor of Environmental Studies and director of the Miller Worley Center for the Environment, described the Commitment as a “ground up approach to sustainability initiatives.”
According to Aguilar, the initiative will create community-wide conversations to help identify potential areas where new sustainability projects can occur, as well as what assets the community can utilize to achieve them. “It’s really a space to allow for multiple stakeholders to come together and talk about things that they would like to see and they would like to commit to doing,” she said.
Inspiration for the CC2CJ came from Aguilar’s own experience in the MWCE. “I was hearing from different parts of the campus things that people were concerned about that they wish we were doing and then also things that people wanted to do,” Aguilar said. From this, the CC2CJ emerged as a way to bring together ideas from across campus with groups that have the tools to achieve them. An example that Aguilar provided was hearing from staff members who were interested in recycling printer ink cartridges.
Aguilar described the CC2CJ as a process that will work alongside the College’s sustainability commitments, which she said often operate on the “macro level” while having independent goals. “The idea is not for it to be a place where we are answering to any sort of mandate from the College, but rather a place where we are creating our own sort of agenda of what we want to do,” she explained.
The CC2CJ will likely meet three times a year, according to Aguilar, and is open to students from all backgrounds. Aguilar expressed that meetings will aim to “make sure everybody has a voice” in discussions of sustainability initiatives. “In order to be involved, you don’t have to be an expert or even know much about sustainability or climate change,” she said, adding that the organization instead is looking for “somebody who does a good job of communicating with their peers and their colleagues, and then getting feedback from their peers and colleagues to bring back to the conversations that we’re having.”
Aguilar was enthusiastic about the CC2CJ’s prospects. “There’s so much energy and concern about the environment across campus,” she commented. The initiative is tasked with the job of taking this energy and using it to organize the community’s assets and provide a platform for campus-wide communication. Through that platform, sustainability ideas, small and large, can see realization.
Those interested in getting involved with the CC2CJ can reach out to the MWCE.