A group of Syracuse University and SUNY-ESF students called on their respective institutions to divest from the fossil fuel industry.

Notwithstanding disassociation for its own sake, the divestment campaign is irrational because it is contrary to its advocates’ stated goal, and more importantly, it violates rational self-interest.

Granted, divestment advocates see fossil fuel use as immoral and thus want their educational institutions to disassociate, and divestment is a gesture of disassociation.

However, the stated goal of divestment is to stop SU and the State University of New York College of Environmental Science and Forestry from “[paying] for our education with [fossil fuel] investments” because they find doing so “unconscionable,” according to gofossilfree.org.

The divestment campaign at SU and ESF, which is against using money from fossil fuel investments for education, makes no sense because upon the campaign’s hypothetical success, fossil fuel investments would be sold for money that SU and ESF will use for education.

Specifically, they want SU and ESF to “immediately freeze any new investment in fossil-fuel companies, and to divest within five years from direct ownership and from any commingled funds that include fossil fuel public equities and corporate bonds.”

The divestment advocates’ petitions do not demand SU or ESF do anything specific with the money gained from divestment; so, it is safe to assume SU and ESF would keep the money.

Hence, by divesting, SU and ESF would be funding education with capital gains from fossil fuel investments. The divestment gesture is self-defeating.

Additionally, the morality behind divestment contradicts self-interest. Divestment is an expression of moral opposition to fossil fuels where no fossil fuel use is reduced; everyone involved continues to consume energy derived from fossil fuels.

It establishes a moral imperative that will be immediately and knowingly violated by its adherents; by intention, all preach what cannot be practiced; all are set in a perpetual state of guilt.

Bill McKibben, who inspired the SU and ESF divestment campaign, admitted recently in Orion Magazine that despite great effort, he is “still using far more than any responsible share of the world’s vital stuff.”

“The ones doing the loudest asking (for divestment) are often the most painfully idealistic, not to mention the hardest on themselves,” McKibben said.

It is good to sacrifice; it is good to be in pain. If McKibben, the leader of the movement can never sacrifice enough to be virtuous, his followers surely cannot. That is why perpetual sacrifice is their only virtue.

In the words of Ayn Rand, author or Atlas Shrugged, people of these morality types “fall over one another in a scramble to see who can submit better and more. There will be no other distinction to seek. No other form of personal achievement.”

Currently, we depend on carbon-based energy to live, to be productive and to be happy. To condemn our own lives, our own productivity and our own happiness — according to the divestment advocate — is righteousness.

Michael Stikkel is a junior computer engineering major and MBA candidate in the Martin J. Whitman School of Management. His column appears weekly. He can be reached at mcstikke@syr.edu

Published on April 8, 2013 at 1:50 am