An excerpt from Kathleen Dean Moore’s recent speech “The Moral Case for Divestment from Fossil Fuels” at Gustavus Adolphus College in St. Peter, Minnesota:

Divest. Etymologically, di-vest means “take off your clothes.” In an ethical context, it means, take a moral stand by shedding investments in immoral practices. In the context of a university’s endowment fund, it means a conscientious and forward-thinking Foundation officer standing up and saying something like this:

Fossil fuels are disrupting the climate in ways that, if left unchecked, will wreck the world — and our students’ futures. That is flat wrong. The harm to our students is real and ugly and intentional. We will have no part of it. We will not profit from it. We will not trade our students’ futures for any amount of money – and especially not for a dirty dribble of profits from a destructive and dying industry.