Medical Ethics and Fossil Fuel Divestment

The history of the University of Toronto is rich with medical innovation, notably including the inception of insulin and stem cell research. To this day, the institution prides itself on its excellence in studying all aspects of health. On their website, the Faculty of Medicine boasts that they’ve “remained at the forefront of life-changing health research and innovation for more than a century.” This is true, and this is also a large part of the reason why the university chose to withdraw their investments from tobacco in 2007. The university has already conceded that investing in an industry that has been proven to cause negative health effects is unethical. With this fact in mind, the choice for the university to divest from the fossil fuel industry should not only be an obvious conclusion, but also an enthusiastic and unanimous “YES!”

We all know that climate change is now accepted as fact in the scientific community. It is the largest looming issue of our time, intersecting in numerous ways with current and future wars, population displacement, gender inequity, economic disparity, numerous other social and political challenges, and, of course, health. In 2007, after divesting from tobacco, former University of Toronto President David Naylor stated, “There is no serious academic or social debate about tobacco’s health effects.” This is also true of climate change. This is the reason that, right now at the COP21 Paris Climate Talks, there are more world leaders under one roof than there have been at any other point in history. As Alice Munro wrote in the recent COP21 Series in Harvard’s Health and Human Rights Journal, “The fossil fuel divestment movement is the fastest growing in history thanks to its ability to unite people around a global-level social injustice, and a genuine financial risk.”

As a fourth-year student studying biology and environmental health, I know that the direct impacts of fossil fuel extraction on human health can be clearly seen through both immediate and long-lasting effects. Through the UofT350 club on campus, I have written in the Divestment Brief and in letters to the ad hoc committee deciding on divestment, outlining the negative effects of fracking, oil sands extraction, and bitumen leaks from oil extraction and transport. All of the above lead to contamination of water sources, killing and injuring wildlife and humans alike. In addition, our brief also contains information about numerous further social injuries already being felt related to the burning of fossil fuels, including fatal air pollution and climate change effects if fossil fuel industries expand and we dive into the perils of a world with >2 degrees of warming.

As a researcher at UofT, I was privileged to spend part of this summer in the Athabasca Oil Sands region of Alberta, primarily with five First Nations communities—the Dene Tha’, DehCho, Beaver Lake Cree, West Moberly, and Cold Lake Dene First Nations. All of these communities reported negative effects from oil sands extraction via various health effects: air pollution, loss of rights and access to land, lower water table, lack of wildlife to hunt, and, most predominately, vast areas of water contamination in concert with increasing prevalence of some cancers. A representative of Treaty 8 First Nations of Alberta told me that nearly every Treaty 8 community has been under water boiling advisories for most of the last decade.

These disproportionate effects felt by the frontline communities are the reason that the University of Toronto must divest from direct holdings in fossil fuels. We cannot actively participate in and profit from the stripping of these communities’ rights to a healthy environment, ultimately leading some to their deaths. Unless we divest, the University of Toronto will continue to profit from the destruction of health and human rights for so many communities.

This especially cannot continue while, at the same time, the university is training medical students who may one day be attempting to treat these same communities who are becoming ill from the fossil fuel industries. To put it simply, the university is investing millions into companies that create illnesses that the university prepares its students and researchers to treat.

The divestment campaign in Toronto has been aided by the Dalla Lana School of Public Health, as well as the UofT Medical Society. I am confident that many other students and faculty studying health agree that universities cannot equitably continue to invest in companies causing negative health effects to so many. The British Medical Association, Oxford University, the Norwegian Sovereign Wealth Fund, Oslo, Seattle, San Francisco, Victoria, the Rockefeller Brothers Fund, and the University of Glasgow—all of these institutions and cities, and many others, have made commitments to divest.

The University of Toronto has the often been at the forefront of historical innovations, and we have the opportunity to be the first Canadian university to completely divest from the top 200 fossil fuel companies. We can push this movement to stop profiting from the destruction of environmental health and become the premier institution of ethical education in Canada.

At this point, staying invested in fossil fuels is a huge political statement—a statement against equity and ethics in institutional investments. A commitment to divest, on the other hand, could lead to a ripple effect, where a relatively simple decision can cause a massive shift in social consciousness. As a leading institution in medical research, I am sure the university is very familiar with the idea that simple concepts can have huge impacts.