Al Gore Calls on Harvard to Divest from Fossil Fuels

Former US Vice President Al Gore has called on his alma mater Harvard University’s $39.2 billion endowment to divest of fossil fuel investments in a speech given to students at the university’s 2019 Class Day.

“We are putting 110 million tons of man-made, heat-trapping global pollution into the sky every day as if it is an open sewer,” Gore said, “and the accumulated quantity now traps as much extra heat energy every day as would be released by 500 Hiroshima-sized atomic bombs exploding every 24 hours.”

During his post-political career, Gore has become a prominent environmental activist, winning the Nobel Peace Prize, as well as an Academy Award for his documentary “An Inconvenient Truth” in 2007. He called climate change “a threat to the survival of human civilization as we know it” and that divestment is “a moral issue” for Harvard.

“Why would Harvard University continue to support with its finances an industry like this that is in the process of threatening the future of humanity?” Gore said. “The largest sovereign wealth fund in the world in Norway financed completely by oil and gas revenues has started divesting from fossil fuels, and so should Harvard University.”

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Gore equated the investment in fossil fuels to Harvard’s previous controversial investments.

“It was immoral to continue investing in apartheid, but the university did respond as they responded when they realized it was immoral to invest in tobacco stocks,” Gore said. “Well, let me tell you that the oil companies and gas and coal companies today have been following the same strategy innovated by the tobacco companies years ago.”

Harvard’s endowment has been under ongoing pressure from students, faculty, and alumni to divest from fossil fuels. In April, Divest Harvard, a fossil fuel divestment advocacy group, marked Earth Day with a week of climate-related rallies known as “Heat Week.” And last year Kathryn “Kat” Taylor resigned as a member of Harvard’s Board of Overseers to protest the university’s failure to address what she said are unethical investments in fossil fuel companies.

Despite the protests and pressure, Harvard University President Lawrence Bacow has remained steadfast in his objection to divesting from fossil fuel companies, and instead has advocated engaging the companies to change.

“The endowment exists to support the institution, to support our students, and to support our faculty,” Bacow said in a March interview with student newspaper The Harvard Crimson. “And it was on those terms that our donors have entrusted the resources to us. They’ve said here, here are these resources which we want you to invest to support these activities—not to accomplish some other ends.”

Tags: Al Gore, Endowments, ESG, Fossil Fuels, Harvard

Beneficiaries of the American Federation of Musicians and Employers’ Pension Fund are not jazzed about their wobbly retirement plan’s decision to reduce benefits as a means to fight insolvency.

The $1.8 billion organization announced its “critical and declining status” earlier in the month, and said that it will apply to the US Treasury for the reductions. The fund, holding $3 billion in liabilities, is projected to run out of money in 20 years. It is now 60% funded.

The pension plan caters to some 50,000 musicians who’ve played in Broadway and other theater productions, performed on TV, in orchestras, and on the soundtracks of countless films and shows.

How did things go so wrong? According to a statement on its website, the plan’s sad tale mirrors that of many other underfunded pension programs. It suffered the staggering one-two punch of investment losses incurred during the Great Recession, combined with rising benefit payments that contributions can’t cover.

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The plan had also seen significant drops in membership in recent years coupled with less contract work available to members.

So it has chosen to cut benefits, which is allowed under the Multiemployer Pension Reform Act of 2014. “There is no practical way that investment returns and contribution increases alone will be able to close the long-term, worsening gap between the money coming in and going out,” the musicians’ plan said in a statement.

It also will actively push for legislation to better aid its insolvency, as well as that of the more than 120 other multiemployer pension plans across the nation in the same boat.

Out of the 50,000 members participating in the pension plan, about 20,000 are doomed to see eventual benefit clawbacks. Those that are safe from cuts are due to age restrictions within the law. The only silver lining is that the cuts won’t happen right away. The fund will continue to pay what its retirees are owed until it can’t. If the plan runs out of money, beneficiaries can get paid by the federal Pension Benefit Guaranty Corp.

However, the process takes at least a year, and the labor federation doesn’t have time on its side.

“The stakes are too high to avoid taking action while we wait for Congress to act,” the fund said. “We have a responsibility to do everything in our power to ensure that the Fund is able to pay benefits for the long-term.”

Tags: Multiemployer Pension Plans, multiemployer Pension Reform Act, Music, Musician’s Pension Fund, Pension, Trustees of the American Federation of Musicians and Employers' Pension Fund