It's Not Easy Pleasing Greens

Do environmentalists oppose pollution or capitalism?

By Collin Levy
Friday, June 8, 2007 12:01 a.m.

If you want to understand something about the changing nature of environmental politics, have a look at a group of New Jersey nuns. The Sisters of St. Dominic, who generate their own solar energy to reduce their carbon footprint, also own stock in ExxonMobil. In May, they led a shareholder movement to require the global oil giant to figure out how to reduce its own greenhouse impact by September.

The story didn't get much attention in the nuns' backyard. But 3,000 miles away in northern California, it created a mini-firestorm. Here's why: Stanford University, which receives a $100 million research endowment for its Global Climate and Energy Project from Exxon to examine climate change--and owns stock in the company--also has a policy of supporting environmentally friendly initiatives.

So would the university vote with the nuns at the next shareholder meeting? Or would it seek to protect the value of its investment, not to mention avoid giving offense to a big funder of its research programs, by voting with company executives?

After much hand-wringing and "whither academic independence?" talk, Stanford voted against its benefactor and in favor of the nuns' proposal. Instead of indignation, the oil execs offered up a collective shrug. In a statement to the press, Exxon noted that it values its partnership with Stanford and considered the difference of opinion a non-event.

The shareholder vote failed anyway, but the episode was revealing. As more big-business money goes to supporting research on alternative fuels, campus eco-warriors are having to rethink their agenda. The recent success of the environmental movement in selling the danger of climate change has forced a once-fringe group to reconsider its relationship to industrial science and capitalism. Indeed, it has to face the possibility that its pet problem may now lead to technological solutions, not the abandonment of industrial society and consumerism (the true dream of many greenies).


A particularly telling illustration of this turning point is the falling out between Greenpeace and one of its founders, Patrick Moore. Mr. Moore considers climate change sufficiently dire as to require an embrace of that longstanding bête noire of the green team--nuclear energy.

The same fissure is apparent on campus. Stanford and Berkeley have both entered into big-bucks corporate partnerships dedicated to what was once a great environmentalist goal--addressing the problem of energy sufficiency. But instead of celebrating victory, student activists are on the warpath. According to the script, Exxon and BP are supposed to be the "enemy," not the "solution." By lending their imprimatur to such industrial villains, the elite universities are complicit in the "greenwashing" of polluters.

These accusations have come with the usual campus antics. In March, two Berkeleyites poured a slimy mixture on the university's steps and advised the community to get used to being soiled by its partnership with "Big Oil." In April, protesters staged a sit-in atop a redwood in the center of campus. Last month they led a march against the new campus institute devoted to researching biofuels. "BP was the straw that broke the camel's back," one student told the San Francisco Chronicle, "and then there was a lot of stuff on the back to begin with, such as nuclear weapons, military recruiters on campus and inadequate wages paid to custodians."


All of this is particularly amusing in light of the hype in California last year over a ballot initiative called Proposition 87, also known as the "Clean Alternative Energy Act." Under the act, oil companies, having failed to invest enough in research on alternative fuels, would face a tax on each barrel of oil taken out of California. The money would be used in part to start a research fund for alternative energy technology.

Many of the state's environmental glitterati rallied to support the initiative, including honorary resident Al Gore, Julia Roberts and Hollywood gadabout and heir Steve Bing, who pledged more than $40 million of his inherited wealth to the cause. The proposition failed, but the big oil companies launched new alternative fuel research institutes on California campuses shortly thereafter. Instead of gloating, Mr. Bing lashed out at Stanford for participating, publicly taking back $2.5 million of a gift to the school in protest.

The outrage of Mr. Bing and others is hard to fathom, but their chief concern seems to be that, between them, the universities and the energy companies have cut the political activists out of control of the investment dollars. The Center for Science in the Public Interest, a liberal watchdog group, has set up its own "Project for Integrity in Science" to "scrutinize conflicts of interest" at those schools and other nonprofit associations that receive corporate funding. The basic principle is fine: Transparency in philanthropy is generally a good thing.

But the agenda of Mr. Bing and his environmentalist friends seems confused. Are they against capitalism or against pollution? Have they figured out that the two are not (always) the same?