Money Talks
Rachel Carson understood that money talks. She would have welcomed the successes of today’s fossil fuel divestment campaigns and their careful dissection of the evasions and prevarications of the oil, gas, and coal industries and the disastrous effect of their products on the planet and on human health. And she would have been heartened by the leading role of young Americans on college campuses in calling these companies to account, in demanding that colleges and universities live up to their professed ideals by eliminating their investments in fossil fuel companies and refusing to accept contributions from them. It is why the Rachel Carson Council, the organization that Carson wanted her friends to initiate to carry on after her death, has published this comprehensive report, Money Talks: Strategy, Success, and Action on Divesting and Reinvesting Funds for Fossil Fuels.
Rachel Carson did not simply warn the world about DDT. She warned, too, of the growing power of corporations. She was eloquent about the perils of their greed and pollution, their poisoning of the public discourse through disinformation and PR campaigns, through lies and paid, white-coated scientific hacks. “We must not be deceived by the enormous stream of propaganda that is issuing from the pesticide manufacturers and from industry-related – although ostensibly independent – organizations…This material is going to writers, editors, professional people, and other leaders of opinion.”
And she wrote, too, of the corruption of academic research and integrity by the financial contributions and grants from the chemical industry. “Is industry becoming a screen through which facts must be filtered, so that the hard, uncomfortable truths are kept back and only the harmless morsels allowed to filter through? I know that many thoughtful scientists are disturbed that their organizations are becoming fronts for industry.”
And at Scripps College, in the only commencement address she was able to give, Carson called on college students across the land to act. “Your generation must come to terms with the environment. Your generation must face realities instead of taking refuge in ignorance and evasion of truth. Yours is a grave and a sobering responsibility, but it is also a shining opportunity.”
And act they have. Money Talks is an account and analysis of the origins, growth, and accomplishments of one of the great, but underappreciated and insufficiently documented social movements of our time. But it is also a guide and renewed call to action, to that “shining opportunity” of which Rachel Carson wrote.
Money Talks grows out of the work of the Rachel Carson Council in campus divestment and reinvestment campaigns over a number of years, especially the work of our RCC Fellows and Stanback Fellows who have led campaigns at UNC-Asheville, Wilmington, and Chapel Hill, as well as at Vanderbilt, Tulane, and the Claremont colleges. The voices of the current generation are central to Money Talks. Our report is not just about the intricacies of endowment holdings and decision-making, socially responsible investments, or negotiations with Boards of Trustees. The authors are themselves young environmental activists and leaders at Duke University who chose to take their Duke Stanback Fellowships at the RCC because of its record of serious, science-based investigation — and action. So, too, is their co-author and mentor, RCC Associate Director, Mackay Pierce, who has been a campus organizer at Roanoke College and an environmental justice organizer in Appalachia. They tell and directly share the words, the stories, and strategic thinking of campaigners at Harvard, Stanford, Berkeley, Michigan, and more.
I am proud to have worked and written alongside these young leaders. This generation has arrived just in time when we need them most. Rachel Carson, once again, was prescient, straightforward and succinct. “Conservation is a cause that has no end. There is no point at which we shall say our work is finished.”
Robert K. Musil, Ph.D., M.P.H., President & CEO
