Dear President Faust and Fellows of the Harvard Corporation: We, as alumni of Harvard University, call upon our

alma mater to divest from the top 200 publicly traded fossil fuel companies. Harvard has an obligation to divest for three main reasons: ! I) to affirm Harvards support of its own scholars !II) to acknowledge climate change as a moral issue! III) to uphold the values it encourages in students and the larger community. I. Harvard graduates and faculty, trusted around the world, have led the way in calling attention to the dangers of global climate change and the need to accelerate the transition to sustainable energy sources. The Harvard Medical School faculty boasts Dr. Eric Chivian, who has worked for nearly two decades to involve physicians in efforts to protect the environment and to increase public understanding of the potential health consequences of climate change. James J. McCarthy, Harvards Alexander Agassiz Professor of Biological Oceanography and an author and reviewer for the UNs Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, testified in August 2012 before the Senate about the urgent dangers of climate change. Jeffrey Sachs (80) leads the Earth Institute at Columbia University, which unites diverse stakeholders to develop solutions to environmental degradation. Some of the earliest and most visible figures in the climate movement are writer and environmentalist Bill McKibben (82) and Nobel laureate Al Gore (69). Alumnus H. Jeffrey Leonard (76) founded the Global Environment Fund, which manages approximately $1 billion in environmentally and socially responsible investments. These respected environmental advocates and researchers are backed by Harvard degrees and the Universitys active support. As they work to sound the alarm about climate change and mitigate its causes and effects, Harvard continues to invest in fossil fuel companiesa contradictory position. II. Harvardas a world leader with the largest university endowmenthas a moral obligation to stop investing in corporations that profit from death and destruction. The World Bank recently reported that the planet, on our current trajectory, is heading for 4 degrees Celsius warming. The impact would include extreme heat-waves, declining global food stocks, loss of ecosystems and biodiversity, and life-threatening sea level rise. Another report, commissioned by 20 governments, found that climate change is already causing 400,000 deaths per year and that continued fossil fuel use is expected to cause 100 million deaths over the next 18 years. Such mounting evidence shows that the moral consequences of global warming far outweigh any possible financial benefits of investing in fossil fuels, while multiple reports demonstrate that socially responsible investments do not negatively impact returns. Harvard maintains a morally untenable position by investing in corporations that pursue a profit model that guarantees global catastrophe and simultaneously work to obstruct federal climate legislation through their political contributions, lobbying, and antiscience disinformation campaigns. The University has divested from companies on moral grounds in the past. Harvard partially divested from apartheid South Africa by selling $50 million in Citibank debt securities. The University fully divested from tobacco corporations and PetroChina, a company that supported genocide in Darfur. Now it is time for Harvard to divest from fossil fuels. In doing so, Harvard would acknowledge on a global stage that climate change is a profoundly moral issue. III. Profiting from an unethical entity is itself unethical and incompatible with Harvard Colleges mission of encouraging students to assume responsibility for the consequences of personal actions. We believe that Harvard should treat investments with the same ethical consideration as it treats its students education and take responsibility for the effects of its actions upon the world in which those students will lead their lives. The recently announced Social Choice Fund for alumni donations is an important step towards a responsible endowment, but it does not address the fundamental inconsistency of Harvards continued investment in the destruction of a viable future. In conclusion: We, as alumni, do not want our donations to support companies that threaten our future and the world we will leave our children. Nor do we want our alma mater to gain from enterprises whose business models depend on extracting and burning fossil carbon regardless of the consequences for future generations. Harvard now has the ability to lead by example. The Universitys divestment from these 200 fossil fuel companies would signal to major institutions around the worldacademic and otherwisethat it is time for all who care about the future of our world to turn away from the destructive impacts of fossil fuels. Action from principlethe perception and the performance of rightchanges things and relations, wrote Henry David Thoreau, class of 1837, in Resistance to Civil Government. President Faust and Fellows of the Harvard Corporation, we urge you to heed this call to action as individuals of conscience and to join us by committing to freezing new investment in fossil fuel companies and divesting from ownership in the top 200 fossil fuel companies that own the majority of carbon reserves.

DIVEST HARVARD ALUMNI RESOLUTION

continued President Faust and Fellows of the Harvard Corporation, we urge you to heed this call to action as individuals of conscience and to join us by committing to freezing new investment in fossil fuel companies and divesting from ownership in the top 200 fossil fuel companies that own the majority of carbon reserves.

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