Comment by contemporary343
3 years ago
There is a potentially valid criticism here since this is ultimately about what the school (with its tremendous resources) is choosing to focus its efforts on. Stanford's previous global climate and energy project was famously funded by oil companies (though I suspect this was mostly a PR thing for them in previous decades), so this is not surprising. But should their priorities be those of the school?
Also some interesting things happening behind the scenes where they are clearly keeping faculty from certain 'troublesome' departments out of the process.. but that's not really unusual in the university context.
On the flip side, I think folks are also over-estimating the importance of corporate sources of funding here. The real reason for this focus is on government funding and resources on this topic that the school will want to tap into.
reading tea-leaves -- there is a behind-the-scenes split on how to proceed, on several fronts. The EU and India proposed directly to include IPCC language about "transitioning to 100% non-fossil fuel" and the USA + friends cancelled that in committee. While lots of ordinary educated people support energy change, you can see from the rhetoric and the stalling that what that "change" is, is not agreed upon. Stanford University, with regular funding from the Oil and Gas giants, are in a position to effect the spin and secrecy around these very public changes.
For example in 2023, the long-term investment and planning to replace Soviet-era oil and gas infrastructure in the Baltics with USA led oil and gas infrastructure in the Baltics is not publicly discussed; plans for control of shipping channels in the Arctic Circle area are not publicly discussed in the USA; changes to the USA grid to accomodate plural energy sources are not publicly discussed. An oil and gas-funded institute at Stanford is in a position to affect all of those. Multiple former US State Department executive leaders are active at Stanford right now.