“Green energy? Sorry, I don’t see color,” claimed Khosla.
Photo by Sharon Roth
Following years of pressure by campus climate activists, UCSD admin declared their intention to “fully decarbonize the university by the time that the planet Earth meets its ultimate, fiery demise approximately 7.5 billion years from now.” Critics have described the University’s plan as “scant,” seeing as the press release consisted of “a single-sentence announcement of a 7.5 billion year decarbonization timeframe,” as well as the words “Will you people stop bothering us now? Oh my god.” written in smaller print.
Doug Duggart, Vice-Chancellor for Virtue Signalling and Generalized Inaction, said that “this decision shows that our university is serious about fighting the climate crisis. We are giving an unequivocal promise to the community, to our students, and to our wealthy donors that we will stop using fossil fuels to power the university. We plan to do this once all of said fossil fuels have been evaporated by the awful, all-encompassing fireball. To all our Indigenous friends, to those who are disproportionately impacted by the extraction of fossil fuels — we hear you, we see you, and we promise to stop contributing to your immiseration at the last possible moment.”
The press release follows a long history of demonstrations on the UCSD campus demanding that the university divest itself from fossil fuels. An especially large march occurred on Friday, Oct 15 as part of the global climate strike movement. The announcement was certainly not what the protestors had been hoping for. “Generally, when I want something to happen, I prefer that it happen while I’m alive,” said Michael al-Hamid, a Warren college junior who participated in the September 24th climate march. “I don’t really like the new UCSD decarbonization policy for that reason.”
When asked about whether the decarbonization timescale was too long, Mr. Duggart replied, “You know, I wouldn’t say it’s long — I’d say it’s realistic. There are a number of considerations we had to take into account when developing this policy. There are real, pressing constraints which keep us from decarbonizing immediately, or even in the next ten years. Firstly, I need to be able to retire from this place and join the ranks of corporate America without having made myself persona non grata by doing some Commie bullshit. That revolving door isn’t going to revolve itself. Secondly, if we decarbonize right now, it’ll annoy all the donors with money tied up in fossil fuel investments. And if we do that, who’s going to give us the money to build those gigantic glass office buildings that no one ever uses? We have to really think about this logically.”
The upper echelons of university leadership do not appear moved by climate activists’ arguments that, “without the whole of society decarbonizing as quickly as possible, catastrophic climate change is inevitable.” Chancellor Khosla is currently planning to avoid climate change by moving to a temperature-controlled refuge in outer space, which he plans to call “Pradeep Space Nine.”
