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Carleton College will start to “reduce its exposure” to fossil fuel companies, according to a joint statement from Carleton president Alison Byerly and Board of Trustees chairman Wally Weitz.
The college’s Board of Trustees voted Thursday to immediately eliminate all the institution’s direct holdings in fossil fuel companies and pledged not to make any new investments in private funds that focus on oil and gas holdings, according to Byerly and Weitz’s statement.
“Carleton has grappled for some time with the difficult question of whether to join the many peer colleges and universities that have expressed their commitment to sustainability through divestment from fossil fuels,” they wrote. “The increasing urgency of the climate crisis has given added weight to the arguments that have been made over the years about the importance of divestment.”
The decision comes on the heels of years of faculty and student activism supporting divestment.
While the action plan laid out in the statement doesn’t immediately sever ties with fossil fuel companies, it does lay out a timeline for the “full liquidation” of investments in oil and gas by 2030 and promises transparency in reporting updates on progress toward divestment.
The private liberal arts college in Northfield, Minn., is the latest in a long string of higher ed institutions to take steps toward fossil fuel divestment, a trend that has gained steam in recent years.
