Climate Obstructionism and Elitism within Higher Education

Universities throughout the world claim to be advancing a more sustainable society, contributing to a better future, and confronting the climate crisis. Yet most universities are increasingly catering to elites and corporate interests and are therefore upholding the exploitative and extractive systems and structures that are causing ecological crises, worsening societal inequities, and creating economic precarity. Investing in higher education is a clear climate obstructionism strategy of powerful elites and fossil fuel interests. Climate obstruction refers to intentional efforts to deny the severity of the climate crisis or to slow or block policies or transformative climate action. Recognizing the links among knowledge, wealth and power, universities are being used to legitimize climate delay by promoting the promise of non-transformative technologies and constraining inquiry on social change (Leonard 2019, Graham 2020). Research confirms that fossil fuel companies benefit from university partnerships by purchasing academic credibility and public trust of universities and using research outputs to lobby policymakers (Gray and Carroll 2018). A 2023 report revealed that fossil fuel companies donated more than $700 million in research funding to universities in the United States from 2010-2020 (Data for Progress 2023), and a 2022 study of 26 academic energy research centers in the UK, USA and Canada confirmed that those funded by fossil fuel interests wrote more positively about natural gas than renewable energy (Almond, Du et al. 2022). Many climate and energy research centers and degree programs at universities around the world are funded by industry partners who are then invited to engage and contribute to shaping the university’s initiatives (Corderoy et al. 2023, Hiltner et al. forthcoming). Universities have become influential and strategic sites of climate obstruction. The influential societal role of higher education institutions has been clearly recognized and leveraged by fossil fuel interests to thwart climate action, perpetuate fossil fuel reliance, and sustain the status quo by prioritizing the development of future technologies to distract from fossil fuel phaseout. This paper reviews a range of ways that higher education institutions are slowing down climate action including the narrowness of economics research or teaching that tends to minimize or dismiss climate disruptions and the lack of research and teaching related to fossil fuel phaseout. A climate justice paradigm shift for higher education is proposed. A commitment to climate justice provides a new way for universities to leverage diverse kinds of knowledge to distribute wealth and power (instead of concentrating it). Universities committed to climate justice would prepare students for, conduct research on, and engage with communities on transformative social, economic and political change a more equitable, just and climate stable future (Kinol et al. 2023).