Universities discover that you reap what you sow

Universities have long been the incubators of climate change hysteria.  They teach anthropogenic climate change there with the same certainty that they teach accounting principles.  There is no room for debate.  Students graduate as true believers.

But what happens when the students discover that their teachers are hypocrites?  They go after them:

A group of Swarthmore College students is asking the school administration to take a seemingly simple step to combat pollution and climate change: sell off the endowment’s holdings in large fossil fuel companies. For months, they have been getting a simple answer: no.

As they consider how to ratchet up their campaign, the students suddenly find themselves at the vanguard of a national movement.

In recent weeks, college students on dozens of campuses have demanded that university endowment funds rid themselves of coal, oil and gas stocks. The students see it as a tactic that could force climate change, barely discussed in the presidential campaign, back onto the national political agenda.

“We’ve reached this point of intense urgency that we need to act on climate change now, but the situation is bleaker than it’s ever been from a political perspective,” said William Lawrence, a Swarthmore senior from East Lansing, Mich.

Because I do not believe in anthropogenic climate change (as opposed to naturally occurring climate change, in which I strongly believe), I think we should be funding research into and production of any and all sources of energy.  Massive amounts of available energy improve people’s lives around the world.  I therefore hope that this de-funding effort doesn’t result in such massive financial losses that America is forced to abandon important energy sources.  Nevertheless, this movement appeals to me.  The universities thought that they could have both ways:  teach hysteria at the front end while making money at the back end.  It’s great to see them being called on their hypocrisy.