Stanford Dumps Rotting Corpse of Coal

Hear that?  It's the divestment train "This Is How We Killed Apartheid" running over the remains of Big Coal and heading straight for Big Oil and Big Gas.

Think Progress:

Stanford University announced Tuesday it would divest from the coal industry, making it the first major university to do so.

The university’s internal guidelines allow the Board of Trustees to consider whether the “policies or practices” of companies they invest in “create substantial social injury.” Following a five-month review process, an advisory panel that included students, faculty, staff and alumni recommended that stocks from companies “whose principal business is coal” be sold off and excluded from any future investments. On Tuesday, the Board voted to follow through on that conclusion.

Lisa Lapin, Stanford’s associate vice president for communications, told the New York Times that the decision covers about 100 companies around the globe, some of whom are currently in Stanford’s investment portfolio and some of whom are not. Those that are account for only a small portion of the $18.7 endowment, “but a small percentage is still a substantial amount of money,” Lapin added.

If you don't remember the '80s, millions of college students on hundreds of campuses nationwide demanded their schools dump their stocks in companies that invested in apartheid South Africa. Long story short: the schools caved, the companies deserted South Africa, and Nelson Mandela walked out of prison. It took less than 10 years.

I give Big Coal five.