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Now I'm really gonna get in trouble, but I'm not going to sit here and watch friends and mentors that spoke truth to power be marginalized because they got money from said power to speak such truth.
1/onceagainintothrebreach https://twitter.com/billmckibben/status/1341789711422140420
1/onceagainintothrebreach https://twitter.com/billmckibben/status/1341789711422140420
When I was at Princeton I received funding from both BP and XoM to work on battery research and the fundamental discoveries we made inspired students to go forth and translate to practice. Neither company stifled my research nor applied its weight in any way to alter the work 2/
Was there "optical concern?" Sure. Did some folks strongly disagree with the decision to work with these companies? Of course. Did we all condemn privately and publicly their previous denial and unfortunate continuing hedging stances. Yes. 3/
From here on out I am speaking for myself and why I participate and did so gladly, and will continue to do so if I believe the companies can change and be transformed. I have never worked on combustion nor have I ever done research that advocated for fossil fuel extraction 4/
Those that know me and were bored enough to sit through my origin story know I chose to work on batteries > 20 years ago because upon my first cross country trip I had the crushing realization on how dependent we were on fossil fuels, and how utterly problematic it was 5/
(Yes, I was working on batteries before they were cool). So I work and work and get really lucky and end up at Princeton at the end of 2012, and I get pulled into some CMI meetings. This is the Princeton-BP partnership that is now beyond it's 20th year. 6/
I was wary, but also like, whatever, I am going to do what I am going to do, and if these folks want to tell me that I'm wrong, well, I'm out, and if they want to use me to greenwash their record, well, I'm out. But that's not what happened. 7/
With folks at Princeton and BP I had a _lot_ of conversations on the potential and challenges of batteries. It helped me focus my research on "what mattered" and target the fundamental unknowns of batteries to make them _more_ competitive against fossil fuels. 8/
I'd like to think that some of my input drove the (nascent and hopefully just the first of much more) investment in battery research and companies that BP has taken on. Who knows. But I learned a lot about how energy markets, scaling challenges, and internal culture of energy 9/
Also, and this is a big also, battery companies circa ~2012 were _really bad_ at running profitable businesses, and oil/gas energy companies were not, and while there are some obvious reasons for this, I wanted to learn about the non obvious reasons. 10/
On the topic of money: the article I retweeted upfront says this, and the question to the reader should be, is this because the University is Lazy or, because funding for climate change research is woefully underfunded by the government? (spoiler alert, it's the latter) 11/
Finally, I'll end this thread with something I brought up to friends earlier this year, in much simpler times: on the topic of university divestments. (full thoughts here https://www.notion.so/ceecnyc/On-Divestment-ea8d19bea07041ac8a52e2879dec6f79). Divestment invokes the "problem of clean hands" 12/
A "Problem of Clean Hands" in my understanding is akin to NIMBYism: it clears the protagonist's conscious, but by taking their ball and going home, they have that much less control over the game. 13/
As such, divestment must be unilateral to be anything other than symbolic. This is effective and historically actionable for "zero-positive" efforts like tobacco companies or racist regimes. 14/
But oil and gas resources enable(d) the haber bosch process which accounts for ~80% of the protein in the world's food supply, so we're clearly not going to get off of fossil fuels tomorrow. But we want a path to zero 15/
So I say we need to have the "Come to Jesus conversation" with fossil providers, and if they continue to solely pursue the other path, then yes, we should part ways. 16/
But I have found that they are shifting because of the economic and social pressure, and outright divestment acts against this positive momentum. 17/
Back to my friends at Princeton: this momentum did not come from nowhere. They started this conversation over 20 years ago, well before the government was actively funding transition pathways. 18/
They are not in the pocket of big oil; they took big oil's money and actively published regarding the both consequences of inaction, and positive pathways to reduce our fossil dependence. 19/
So the core question I struggle with: can the transformation from oil/gas to energy be more than optical? I think the answer is yes, and divestment risks slowing this critical process down. It shouldn't be off the table, but it should be used carefully and as last resort. 20/
I learned this from my time at Princeton, and I still believe this is the case. If those demanding divestment can show an alternative path to fund R&D on climate change and tech development, I am all ears. If we can do it without any current fossil interests, show me the way 21/
But at the same time, if the knowledge of how to move TW(h) of energy can be appropriated from fossil fuel companies, and they bring capital as well to the party to hasten their shift from extraction, isn't that a viable outcome as well? 22/22
