Without Action, the new Stanford Doerr School of Sustainability will remain entangled with Big Oil.
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Who & Why
We are a coalition of Stanford scientists invested in helping the Doerr School of Sustainability achieve its full potential as a beacon of research excellence that accelerates the energy transition, with the speed and scale necessary to avert catastrophe. Speed and Scale is the admirable title of John Doerr’s new book.
Accepting fossil fuel money for research at the Doerr School will undercut swift climate action and harm the school itself in the following ways:
Supporting expanded exploration and extraction: Fossil fuel companies continue to look for new oil and gas fields to exploit - efforts which are on their face incompatible with reaching targets for a sustainable future - and they use Stanford research to help them do this
Shifting the research agenda: Fossil fuel money pushes research towards climate “solutions” that are non-threatening to fossil fuel companies, and which delay or detract from real solutions
Greenwashing: Stanford affiliation helps fuel companies foster the misleading narrative that they are working in good faith toward a real energy transition
Garnering credibility for Big Oil: Stanford affiliation helps fossil fuel companies bolster their lobbying efforts in policy circles, while they work to block policy that promotes swift climate action
Sacrificing Stanford’s credibility: Partnering with fossil fuel companies risks the school’s real and perceived academic integrity and independence, as well as its reputation in the eyes of students, faculty, policymakers, and the public
Reality vs. Potential
As scientists and students at the Doerr School of Sustainability, we are calling on Stanford leaders to decline funding to the School from fossil fuel companies.
Specifically, we are asking Doerr School leadership to:
Commit to an open and transparent process for industry-funded research. This process should be transparent and based on quantifiable, Paris-aligned criteria. Research has shown that none of our current fossil fuel partners are Paris-aligned.
Commit to enforcing the criteria once they are published, and
Phase out funding from industry partners that do not meet the criteria.
Leading with courage
Professor Jef Caers talks about his pledge to no longer accept new funding from fossil fuel companies in the Stanford Doerr School of Sustainability. He shares the life experience and learnings that went along with this decision and how he has transformed his research to focusing on 100% renewable energy.
Fossil fuel greenwashing and brainwashing
The fossil fuel industry would end a livable biosphere and human civilization for profit. Learn from activist David Fenton how to counter these disinformation campaigns, and how a small group of activists can use communications to defeat entrenched interests and calcified narratives.
The future of the Doerr School
What should the future of the Doerr School of Sustainability at Stanford look like? What should the role of fossil fuel funding be at Stanford? At this Roundtable, participants weighed in on these questions and learned from professors, students and activists. This interactive event featured talks from Adam Aron, Dharna Noor and Rose Abramoff, as well as a panel of Stanford affiliates.
Facts and Myths about Fossil Fuel Funding:
Case study: ExxonMobil’s association with Stanford
ExxonMobil and many other companies use their association with Stanford and other prestigious universities to claim they are combating climate change. However, they continue to explore for and extract new oil reserves and they push for policies that expand fossil fuel infrastructure. Screenshots presented here available at ExxonMobil’s website.
“[At the Doerr School,] [we] have the responsibility to examine and ensure that our partnerships align with our values, vision, and ambition. We are, therefore, confronted by the ethical question of how we identify external organizations and how we should partner with them in research and educational collaborations. At the heart of the issue are key questions: What are our values? What are our goals and ambitions?”
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— Arun Majumdar, incoming dean of the Doerr School of Sustainability,