Category: PhD thesis

The transnational nature of the climate change activist movement

One challenge in the dissertation process has been repeated entreaties to only talk about Canadian campus fossil fuel divestment (CFFD) campaigns, not those in the US and UK.

I think Karen Litfin’s 2005 article “Advocacy Coalitions Along the Domestic-Foreign Frontier: Globalization and Canadian Climate Change Policy” may be helpful for making my case that divestment is a transnational movement and that more is lost than gained by imposing national borders on its analysis. Litfin argues that “the twin phenomena of economic globalization and the internationalization of environmental affairs are blurring the distinction between some policy subsystems and the international arena.” I would argue that this is especially true for climate change activism, for several reasons. The politics of climate change are inherently bound up in international relations, since unilateral actions can’t solve the problem in the absence of cooperation between states. Furthermore, in North America the highly integrated energy systems — and the everpresent concern about Canadian economic competitiveness compared to the US — contributes to the transnationalization of climate politics, as do influences between ideologically similar political parties in both countries.

In addition, the strategies of broker organizations which have promoted divestment — including 350.org, the Canadian Youth Climate Coalition, the US Fossil Fuel Divestment Student Network, Canada’s Divest Canada Coalition, and the UK’s People & Planet — are based around providing a “campaign in a box” with coordinated objectives, branding, and messaging. Since the CFFD movement is focused on non-government actors, governments and national policy environments have a secondary importance for the movement.

Target: January 31st

I can’t recall ever feeling as stuck with anything as I do with the dissertation. There are so many ‘to do’ items, so many of them depend on others being finished in order to be possible to complete themselves, and there isn’t any day-to-day or week-to-week pressure to keep me focused.

To rekindle the terror which is so often the basis of writing projects being completed, I have promised a 200 page version of my four core chapters edited down by the end of the month. That should address my committee’s most significant comments, and at least leave a text of the write length for any future changes.

Hand editing chapter drafts in U of T libraries

To advance the aim of getting down to four 50-page chapters, I have been bringing printouts to review on campus for the last couple of days. The change of scenery has certainly been accompanied by a change in feeling and thinking, and I am starting to feel the emotional distance from the text which is necessary for effective editing.

The big tasks ongoing are to cut out or move away any sections not important for the scholarly argument in the dissertation; to split out my own normative conclusions from empirical and analytical arguments, to be moved into a chapter of their own at the end; and to cut out passages that are too theoretical or speculative, trying to stick more closely to what can be anchored and justified with reference to the campus fossil fuel divestment movement specifically.

The political opportunities, mobilizing structures, and repertoires chapters are all getting this treatment now, and it feels more like progress forward than continuing with my recent efforts to grind through micro-level changes from my own comments and those of committee members.

It may be that the long section which I wrote on counter-repertoires against divestment developed by university administrations can be pulled out and self-published soon. I did ideally want to find an academic journal for it to get it more attention, but with all the rounds of revision and editing that would require it’s probably best to get it out as a personal draft and focus on getting the actual dissertation out as soon as can be managed.

Back in libraries

To do my part in reducing the reproduction rate of COVID-19, since March 2020 I have been avoiding indoor spaces and largely only going out for grocery walking and exercise walks.

I had stepped into a few U of T libraries to pick up and return books, but tonight was the first time I have gone in and read for several hours since pre-pandemic. Three surprise nice features:

  1. Being at Gerstein and Robarts made me feel like a student again, not just an ex-student with a very long incomplete overdue assignment
  2. The legibility of books under these lights is a reminder of how dim the lighting fixtures are in my current Byq Bepuneq Ubzrf apartment in North York (along with the flimsy plumbing fixtures, cheap locks, woeful lack of insulation, and notably inefficient furnace and AC unit)
  3. Seeing people wearing masks properly and voluntarily — because it’s the rule and because it makes sense — is heartening when so many in Toronto do a terrible job (useless clear hard masks, masks around chins, and loudmouths demanding service unmasked in shops and usually getting it because nobody wants to confront them)

As part of completing 50 page drafts of my political opportunities, mobilizing structures, repertoires, and framing chapters I am going to try reviewing and prioritizing the contents of paper printouts in these libraries during the short time ahead.

Maina, Murray, and McKenzie summarize the literature on campus fossil fuel divestment

From: Maina, Naomi Mumbi and Jaylene Murray and Marcia McKenzie. “Climate change and the fossil fuel divestment movement in Canadian higher education: The mobilities of actions, actors, and tactics.” Journal of Cleaner Production. 2020:

Prior to the current research, few studies have reviewed Canadian HEIs [higher education institutions] investment policies or divestment activities in relation to climate action (Curnow and Gross, 2016; Del Rio, 2017). There has been limited scholarly work on the FFD movement in HEIs in general. The few studies that have examined the movement have explored student activism in climate justice, the connections between FFD and sustainability in higher education, and the factors influencing divestment decisions across the United States, Canada, United Kingdom, and Netherlands (Curnow and Gross, 2016; Bratman et al., 2016; Grady-Benson and Sarathy, 2016 [sic]; Hamaekers, 2015; Healy and Debski, 2016; LeQuesne, 2016; Ringeling, 2015; Singer-Berk et al., 2014). Studies outside of Canada indicate that FFD is increasingly being engaged as a response to the failure of HEIs to adequately address climate change, and is seeking to (re)politicize climate action by demanding transformative and radical change (Bratman et al., 2016; Healy and Debski, 2016; Ringeling, 2015). In the US, several studies found that students previously involved in sustainability initiatives are now more likely to focus their attention on FFD, with support from other stakeholders such as sustainability officers (Singer-Berk et al., 2014).

Decisions to commit to and/or reject divestment have been reported across U.S., Canada, and U.K. HEIs, with most of the commitments coming from small universities and colleges with smaller endowment funds (Hamaekers, 2015; Healy and Debski, 2016; Grady-Benson and Sarathy, 2016). Common reasons for rejections have been said to include fiduciary duty, cost risk to endowment funds, and minimal impact on fossil fuel industry (Bratman et al., 2016; Healy and Debski, 2016; Singer-Berk et al., 2014). Despite rejections, studies have shown that organizers have escalated their campaign tactics to involve direct action and are prepared to carry out long term organizing until their demands are met (Grady-Benson and Sarathy, 2016; LeQuesne, 2016; Ringeling, 2015).

In the case of the Canadian higher education FFD movement, one of the two existing scholarly studies shows that campaign organizing is shifting towards an intersectional social justice framing (Curnow and Gross, 2016). It describes a shift among FFD student leaders and national organizers such as Divestment Student Network (DSN) towards engagement with race, colonialism, environmentalism and solidarity with Indigenous frontline communities (Curnow and Gross, 2016). The two Canadian studies focused on the campaign at the University of Toronto, outlining the motivations, goals, and outcomes of this campaign (Curnow and Gross, 2016; Del Rio, 2017).

References: (as formatted by these authors)

Curnow and Gross, 2016
J. Curnow, A. Gross
Injustice is not an investment: student activism, climate justice, and the fossil fuel divestment campaign
J. Conner, S.M. Rosen (Eds.), Contemporary Youth Activism: Advancing Social Justice in the United States, Praeger, Santa Barbara, California (2016), pp. 367-386

Del Rio, 2017
F. Del Rio
In a World where Climate Change Is everything…; Conceptualizing Climate Activism and Exploring the People’s Climate Movement (Master’s Dissertation)
Retrieved from McMaster University Libraries Institutional Repository (2017)

Bratman et al., 2016
E. Bratman, K. Brunette, D.C. Shelly, S. Nicholson
Justice is the goal: divestment as climate change resistance
J. Environ. Soc. Sci., 6 (4) (2016), pp. 677-690

Grady-Benson and Sarathy, 2015
J. Grady-Benson, B. Sarathy
Fossil fuel divestment in US higher education: student-led organising for climate justice
Local Environ.: Int. J. Justice. Sustain., 21 (6) (2015), pp. 661-681

Hamaekers, 2015
N. Hamaekers
Why Some Divestment Campaigns Achieve Divestment while Others Do Not: the Influence of Leadership, Organization, Institutions, Culture and Resources (Doctoral Dissertation)
Retrieved from Rotterdam School of Management: Erasmus University (2015)

Healy and Debski, 2016
N. Healy, J. Debski
Fossil fuel divestment: implications for the future of sustainability discourse and action within higher education
Local Environ., 22 (6) (2016), pp. 699-724

Singer-Berk et al., 2014
L. Singer-Berk, M. Matsuoka, B. Shamasunder
Campuses of the Future: the Interplay of Fossil Fuel Divestment and Sustainability Efforts at Colleges and Universities
(2014)

LeQuesne, 2016
T. LeQuesne
Revolutionary Talk: Communicating Climate Justice
Master’s Thesis, University of California, Santa Barbara (2016)

Ringeling, 2015
X. Ringeling
Transformative Reformism: A Study of the UK University Fossil Fuel Divestment Movement’s Potential for Significant Change
Master’s thesis, University College London (2015)

Theories for why the University of Toronto divested from fossil fuels

Not mutually exclusive:

  1. They are about to launch a bicentennial fundraising campaign with themes including healthy lives, sustainable future, and the next generation. They feared negative public relations attention if they launched the campaign while continuing to refuse to divest
  2. The university’s investment managers have decided that they can better retain authority and control by choosing how to divest on their own terms, and particularly with little reference to the culpability of the industry
  3. In trying to implement the prior environmental, social, and governance (ESG) screening method, the investment managers at the University of Toronto Asset Management (UTAM) corporation decided that divestment would be easier or better based on their secret internal metrics
  4. The Harvard announcement and COP26 have added to the pressure to announce new efforts
  5. U of T perceived that it was increasingly behind when a growing number of Canadian schools had made divestment commitments
  6. A student-led volunteer campaign persisted through multiple setbacks and core cohort graduations and was sustained by the University of Toronto Leap Manifesto chapter and subsequently the Divestment & Beyond faculty- and union-led campaign after the Toronto350.org / UofT350.org effort

As in the campaign as a whole, the university’s penchant for secrecy makes it challenging to explain or understand their actions. In particular, that includes the parlour trick of setting up your own investment management corporation as a means of evading oversight, by pretending that somehow the advice from this organization should only be available to the administration in secret.

Divest Podcast on the Leap Manifesto U of T divestment campaign

The latest episode of The Divest Podcast features Julia DaSilva from the Leap Manifesto chapter at U of T, the second of three groups to organize divestment campaigns, after the Toronto350.org / UofT350.org campaign and before / concurrently with the faculty/union Divestment & Beyond campaign.

Summarizing and prioritizing

I got an insight on dissertation writing from the Spycast podcast’s interview with former vice presidential daily intelligence briefer Dave Terry:

This isn’t a be-all-end-all book. It’s a tailored 300-page briefing for senior faculty members. That perspective should help lessen the pain of cutting carefully researched content. It’s not that it’s bad, it just doesn’t belong in a briefing of this length and purpose.

Reading about the resistance dilemma

Today I received and began reading George Hoberg’s new book: The Resistance Dilemma: Place-Based Movements and the Climate Crisis.

The usefulness is threefold. It speaks directly to my concern about how the environmentalist focus on resistance isn’t a great match with building a global energy system that will control climate change. It references much of the same literature as my dissertation, so it provides a useful opportunity to check that I haven’t missed anything major. Finally, it’s an example of a complete, recent, and successful piece of Canadian academic writing on the environment and thus a model for the thesis. It’s even about 300 pages, though a lot more fits on a published book page than a 1.5-spaced Microsoft Word page in the U of T dissertation template.