Declaring a Climate Emergency

Santa Clara University Needs to Act Now

A student attending the most recent tUrn Climate Crisis Awareness & Action week asked me whether I thought Santa Clara graduates were more likely to be on the side of climate activists who will help reverse global warming, or if they might become the future executives of fossil fuel companies who prevent real progress on climate action. 

I’m not sure of the answer. Would Santa Clara students be more likely to learn how to maximize profits and greenwash consumers? Or would they be persons for others–meaning the poor, the most vulnerable and historically marginalized groups? Would they perpetuate the climate crisis, or solve it? 

Which side are Santa Clara students on? And if their business training fails to account for the real cost of doing business to the planet, its people and all living beings, then what is keeping them from becoming a greedy oil executive or a businessperson who fails to follow through with climate reparations because it’s not good for the bottom line? 

When business education is focused on capitalistic values of toxic entrepreneurship and profit maximization–a culture that implies to students that activists are some kind of evil group the CEO dreads dealing with and must be squelched–then yes, our students might be susceptible to seeking power and profits without any considerations of ethics or justice. 

Here is where we are: the math is sound, and temperature rise is accelerating. There is nothing stopping our planet's atmosphere from rising way past 2 degrees Celsius over pre-industrial levels sooner than 2050. Only human willpower uniting in a massive way can stop this. 

The best carbon sequestration tactic is nature itself, but even planting a trillion trees is not enough. Human action, consumption of meat and dairy, energy use and all burning of fossil fuels must drastically diminish–immediately. Warming will still continue, but if we cease consuming so much dairy and meat and using so many fossil fuels today, there is a chance that we can drive it down in a couple of decades. 

At 4 degrees Celsius rise, it is thought that forests will probably collapse. Once that happens, all bets are off for the normal supports for human life. The Amazon rainforest provides one-sixth of the oxygen we breathe. We should all be supporting and laying our lives down for the forest protectors who are being killed by employees of greedy oil and agriculture companies everyday for profit maximization 

That is why I believe that students, staff, faculty and Santa Clara’s administration should declare a climate emergency. It fits with our mission, our values, our ethics, and our responsibilities as a well-resourced university positioning itself as a leader in higher education.

If you’ve ever had a massive fever, you know that the body becomes dysfunctional with just a few degrees increase in temperature. Our planet is a lot like us. We are one and the same. If we want it to continue, we can’t let the temperature rise, but everything we are currently doing is driving it up.

Here is a list of things students living in the 21st century should know by the time they graduate if we want to avert the worst outcomes of the current climate crisis:  

1) There is a climate crisis. Rampant racism, colonialism, imperialism made it possible. 

2) Understand the map of the five ice ages and what the off-the-charts parts per million of carbon looks like now. 

3) There are some irreversible harms and losses. There are things we can do about future harms and losses. 

4) People are putting in the work across the globe. We can learn from them. 

5) The connections between inaction, apathy, lack of political and civic engagement and continuing social injustice, racism, environmental degradation and ecosystems collapse.

6) We are witnessing the sixth mass extinction on earth.

7) Severe weather and pandemic events are all related. 

8) Specific people and actions caused this. Consider who and what they were. 

9) Some aspects of the education they are receiving and some of their behaviors and lifestyle choices and luxuries perpetuate the habits that make things worse. 

10) Their studies and careers in whatever sector they are involved in can be part of the solution.

11) How to make systemic changes or lead social actions that make systemic changes possible.

Without an education in these eleven principles, students will probably be more likely to become the executives who accelerate the doomsday scenario we are in rather than becoming the framers of anything like a new Green Deal that their own childrens’ futures will depend on.

In a business meeting I attended several years ago some faculty members asked an administrator about Santa Clara’s commitment to divest from fossil fuels, considering that many schools and groups with social justice missions have already divested. At the time of the meeting, their stock portfolios had recently shifted to lower holdings of fossil fuel-based assets because the value of those assets had been plummeting. The administrator tried to compare this attrition of low-performing financial products with actual divestment, calling it “organic divestment.”

But divestment is a moral stance, not doing less harm because the harm suddenly becomes less profitable. The student-led group Fossil-Free SCU has passed various divestment resolutions in the senates that have yet to see real results. Declaring a climate emergency furthers the rationale for divestment from fossil fuels. 

As the imaginer and manager of tUrn I have had the distinct honor to meet with people from all over campus and the world and to learn firsthand what their understanding of the climate crisis is. My experience is that about 50% of people on campus have very little idea of how bad the climate crisis is. They’ve been somehow sheltered from this information, are in climate denial, or have been supported in their apathy by corporate and cultural messaging that there’s no hope. 

Of those that understand the climate crisis, many have fallen prey to corporate propaganda trying to convince people there is nothing we can do about it. Of course, this is a brilliant strategy for corporations to use; if we are convinced of that, we will never try to hold those corporations accountable for the harms they are perpetuating against humanity–particularly against Black, Brown and Indigenous communities. 

Santa Clara has tried to step up in many ways. Under the leadership of Paul Locatelli, S.J., we were an early signer of the Climate Leadership Commitment through the American College and University Presidents group in 2007 and since then have become a top green school and award-winning sustainability champion. We are in the top five of schools offering electric charging stations–26 in all! 

But something has not sat well with me since I learned that our carbon neutrality was, in part, achieved through the purchase of carbon offsets. This indicates that wealthier schools can buy their way into pronouncements of carbon neutrality. Worse, it has been revealed that carbon offsets are misleading at best–and a sham at worst. It was recently demonstrated that more than 90% of rainforest carbon offsets from one leading provider were actually worthless when it comes to helping with the problem of drawing down global warming. 

When it sounds like it is too good to be true, that a problem caused by overconsumption can be solved by more consumption, it probably is. Many scholarly, scientific and economic critiques of the concept of carbon offsets exist. 

A Declaration of Climate Emergency is a statement of commitment, often in the form or a piece of legislation passed by a governing body such as a city council, a county board of supervisors, a state legislature or even a national government. It allows an institution or a government body to go on record in support of taking emergency action to reverse global warming. Pope Francis, author of the encyclical letter Laudato Si – On Care for our Common Home, declared a climate emergency in June 2019. 

Santa Clara’s current climate neutrality action plan is different from declaring a climate emergency. While it can definitely push us in the right direction and has led to good outcomes, a climate neutrality action plan does not require that we learn anything about the climate crisis. Many people falsely equate the installation of LED lights, the proper sorting of recyclables and organic matter and the use of recycled water as sufficient measures. But even a perfected sustainability plan on campus is far from effective if graduates learn nothing about these things while they are students. 

A few brilliant staff can make the campus climate neutral and it’s important to appreciate and respect those achievements–but the community as a whole is no more prepared for the emergencies to come or able to put a dent in global warming ourselves without an education in the climate crisis, its causes, its impacts or its solutions.

Climate crisis education renders the world of possibilities visible. Without it, ironically, there is little hope.

With the California wildfires, we saw climate refugees moving in all directions. On an overly warmed planet, there will be nowhere to escape to. The wealthy, the privileged and the elites still think they can buy their way out of the climate crisis. They might have air-conditioned bunkers and stockpiles of water, but if that is a definition of successful living, I do not wish to succeed. They too need to be educated.

We must prioritize frontlines, vulnerable, historically disenfranchised communities and those already suffering the ravages of climate change. We absolutely cannot expect our graduates to be committed to climate and environmental justice if they are unaware of the climate crisis, its predicted effects, its causes and its just solutions. They will more easily become oil company executives than caretakers of the earth and its people. In that case, what was the point of a Santa Clara education? Being persons for others means others in future generations too.

The declaration of a climate emergency, like a land acknowledgment, must be backed up with action. But without those statements, we remain sheltered from reality and all current systems–the very ones that have contributed to the climate crisis–will surely persist.

I urge everyone at Santa Clara to consider the significance of getting our institution’s head out of the sand on this issue. All graduates should proudly step into advocacy, activism and organizing for climate and racial justice in their free time if they have some energy to spare and if they care about their own lives and the future.