Dear President Schlissel and Regents;

We are a group of faculty members at the University of Michigan who are concerned with the problems
associated with global climate change. We strongly endorse the studentled Divest and Invest
Campaign on campus.
The campaign requests that the Regents form an ad hoc committee to 1) study of the University of
Michigans investments in enterprises engaged in fossil fuel extraction and production and 2) evaluate
the potential for a change in investment strategy focused on divestment of equities held in such
companies from our institutions endowment portfolio. The targets of the proposed committees
review are the principal facilitators of the multiple crises we face due to accelerating human-caused
climate change. As an overwhelming majority of leading climate scientists have concluded, pushing
Earths atmospheric CO2 concentration beyond 500 ppm will likely lead to a dangerously destabilized
climate. Continuing to burn fossil carbon as our primary energy source is incompatible with the
sustainability of our food system, health, economy, and national security. We are concerned that the
University may be unintentionally involved in supporting groups advancing activities antithetical to that
future, and that the Universitys current investment portfolio and strategy do not align with its core
mission and principles.
We are inspired by previous University actions in analogous situations: South African Apartheid and the
Tobacco Industry-related divestment efforts. The latter case offers an especially strong parallel. It is a
useful precedent for the following reasons:
1) Tobacco companies can be distinguished from other companies by the nature of the product they
make and sell including the unrivaled death toll attributable to tobacco use . . . cigarettes are deadly
when put to their normal use.
2) Based on what has been learned over the past few years from internal industry documents, it is clear
that the tobacco industry . . . has engaged in dishonest, deceptive, and generally reprehensible
conduct . . . at a cost of millions of lives.
There are evident parallels with the fossil fuel extraction industries today. Fossil fuel energy producers
are distinguished from other companies by the nature of the product(s) they make. Their products,
regardless of their historical benefits, are deadly when put to their normal use. Indeed, the deadliness
of the use of their products extends beyond humans to a large number of species and ecosystems that
are being destroyed as a result of climate change.
It is also clear from evidence revealed by internal fossil fuel industry documents themselves that the
industry has engaged in dishonest, deceptive, indeed, reprehensible conduct to suppress scientific
findings, propagate misinformation, and continue with practices whose costs include the disruption if
not loss of millions of lives. The fossil fuel energy industry is a unique contributor to climate change and
is leading an unethical campaign against the facts about the human and ecological impacts of climate
change.
Our institutions core vision is our dedication . . . to ethical and responsible stewardship of financial,
physical and environmental resources. We look for tools and strategies to create and enhance
sustainable practices in all facets of operations and seek to lead in the global quest for a sustainable
future. Much as the faculty concluded with regard to the case of tobacco, we must ask Are the

attributes of fossil fuel energy products and the activities of fossil energy extractors antithetical to the
core mission of the University? and, Is the ownership of securities in such companies logically
inconsistent and antithetical to the core mission of the University to the point requiring
divestment? The answer to both questions is a resounding Yes! Consequently we strongly support
the request of the student-led initiative proposing to study the ethical and moral implications of our
investment strategy in the fossil fuel industry. In supporting this student request we are highly
motivated by the generational issue that it is our students who will be forced to live with the most
detrimental consequences of decisions we make today about Earths future climate and life-support
systems.
We also note that the practical aspect of investment is rapidly changing, warranting a re-examination of
long-term strategies. The underlying goal remains the same, to buy into companies/industries that will
continue to grow and expand over the coming decades, the more the better. Ownership of securities in
fossil fuel extraction businesses implicitly signals that the UM believes that this sector has such a future
and that it is happy to underwrite that growth, despite the mounting environmental cost. Investing in
fossil fuel industries may have been profitable in the past, but the technological and socio-political
landscape is changing very rapidly and it is not in their favor. They now represent the past, not the
future. Many of our peer institutions now recognize this. It is time we did also.
Sincerely yours,
John Vandermeer, Asa Gray Distinguished University Professor of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology
George Kling, Robert G. Wetzel Collegiate Professor of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology
Ivette Perfecto, George Willard Pack Professor of Natural Resources and Environment
Knute Nadelhoffer, Professor of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, and Director of the UM Biological
Station