Maeve Masterson

While we fantasize about what the end of the world will look like, the true apocalypse has already hit home and is terrorizing hundreds of communities living on the frontlines. 

Within the Penn community, this summer effort intends to inspire richer discussion and learning among students and scholars across campus, as well as introduce researchers around campus to each others’ efforts. 

Despite being just a few miles away, the thick smoke that continues to billow from the PES refinery poses a prescient and necessary reminder to most Penn students that the harmful effects of the nation’s highly emissive oil industry are real and ominously close to home. 

How long the sustainability trend will last is open to discretion and debate, and it is reasonable to believe that green consumption, which tricks us into thinking that buying or acting green is the full extent to which we can “do our part,” is holding back the sociocultural transformation that we need to move the needle. 

Penn’s billion-dollar endowment continues to reap returns from investments in the fossil fuel industry, and is thus funding a primary driver of climate change — no questions asked.