Video of Students Reading the Letter Aloud
November 21, 2013
Dear President Faust,
Today we write to you as hungry students, fasting with hundreds of others around the world in solidarity with the victims of Typhoon Haiyan as the UN climate negotiations in Poland draw to a close.
The global fast was sparked last week by Yeb Saño, Philippines delegate to the UN climate negotiations, whose brother had spent three days without food while working to bury the dead after Typhoon Haiyan.
Climate change turned Typhoon Haiyan into an unnaturally destructive disaster. The unusually warm oceans fueled the storm while high sea levels made the flooding worse.
Thousands are dead, but the fossil fuel industry keeps making things worse. According to the International Energy Agency, we are building so much new fossil fuel infrastructure that we will be “locked in” to irreversible warming by 2017. In other words, the status quo means building more fossil fuels—and that status quo will lead to disaster.
We desperately need immediate governmental action to change the path our society is heading down, but the UN talks in Warsaw are failing. Indeed, the negotiations have been overtaken by the fossil fuel industry.Twelve oil and coal companies are sponsoring the conference while the World Coal Association, with the benediction of the hosting Polish government, is holding its own summit next door to the climate talks.
How can we expect climate action to come from a conference so stained by the fossil fuel industry?
Again, our governments have failed us. We urgently need other institutions to step in to create a situation where political climate action is possible. So today, President Faust, we call on you to do more. Refusing to alter our current, failing course will soon make the problem unsolvable. We call on you to seek out new ways for Harvard University to help solve the climate crisis, including divesting our endowment from fossil fuel companies. We call on you to act on the harsh reality that the climate crisis is truly a crisis and the fossil fuel industry led us into this desperate situation.
As Yeb Sano said, we must stop this madness. Please, President Faust—act.
Sincerely,
Alyssa Chan ‘16
Henney Sullivan ‘15
Alli Welton
Canyon Woodward ‘15