How Would You Spend $1 Billion to Study Climate Change?

Wednesday’s New York Times featured an article about venture capitalist John Doerr’s $1.1 billion gift to Stanford University for establishing a department and several institutes to study climate change and sustainability. The gift is the second largest ever to an American institution of higher education.

Reporter David Gelles writes that the gift will establish Stanford as the leading center, public or private, for weaning the world off fossil fuels and establishes the Doerr’s as leading funders of climate change research and scholarship.

Mr. Doerr states that “climate and sustainability is going to be the new computer science. This is what young people want to work on with their lives, for all the right reasons.” Stanford will establish the Doerr School of Sustainability which will house departments related to planetary science, energy technology, and food and water security. The school will also house several interdisciplinary institutes and a center focused on developing practical policy and technology solutions to the climate crisis.

The Doerr School will be the first new school launched at Stanford in 70 years. It is well-funded and will launch with 90 faculty members and add 60 more over the next 10 years. The university announced that it had raised $590 million in additional funds for the school and some of those funds would be used to construct two new buildings for the school.

Mr. Gelles writes that last year, Mr. Doerr published a book titled Speed & Scale: An Action Plan for Solving Our Climate Crisis Now. In that book, he calls for rapid action to reduce emissions and increase the usage of renewable energy. Notably, he writes that “this is a problem of scale that needs far greater ambition, urgency, and excellence deployed against it.”

Before I provide my opinion about the efficacy of Mr. and Mrs. Doerr’s gift, I think it’s appropriate to understand my opinion about climate commitment. In 2006, I signed a document making APUS a charter signatory to the American College and University Presidents’ Climate Commitment (ACUPCC). All college presidents who signed the ACUPCC agreed that their institution would become carbon neutral in 25 to 50 years. In addition, signatory schools would bolster their curriculum adding more environmental science and sustainability courses so that more students would be exposed to the importance of maintaining and improving our environment. APUS had a leg up on other colleges with its online curriculum, but once we conducted our initial environmental inventory, we realized we could do more.

If all the Doerr’s gift goes to Stanford’s permanent endowment to support the school, a conservative estimate is that it will generate $55M per year to cover the school’s operating costs and research ($1.1B times a 5 percent annual draw). The only way $55M per year moves the sustainability needle is if the center for developing practical policy and technology solutions is the major recipient of those operating funds and it educates and trains thousands of environmental emissaries each year.

David Callahan, author of The Givers: Wealth, Power, and Philanthropy in a New Gilded Age is quoted by Mr. Gelles as stating: “I don’t see how giving a billion dollars to a rich university is going to move the needle on this issue in a near-term time frame. It’s nice that he’s parting with his money, but that billion dollars could be better spent trying to move this up on the scale of public opinion. Until the public sees this as a top tier issue, politicians are not going to act.”

Gelles cites investments by other billionaires (Gates, Bezos, and Bloomberg) toward environmental issues. Perhaps Mr. Doerr can convince them to combine forces and direct their funds toward “practical policy and technology solutions.” Given the intractable political environment in Washington and elsewhere, industry leaders and philanthropists need to step forward in alignment to reverse our environmental slide. Time is not on our side.

Subjects of Interest

EdTech

Higher Education

Independent Schools

K-12

Student Persistence

Workforce