Steyer-Taylor Center scholar-in-residence Jeffrey Ball is cited in this Fortune article for recent remarks he made in New Republic on Stanford’s efforts to divest from coal and not “fossil fuels.”

The coal divestment movement is gaining steam as more mainstream players dump their shares.

For a while it was just a dream of environmental activists and college student protesters. Then a handful of liberal universities, and financial institutions jumped in. And this week Norway’s $890 billion government pension fund joined the trend, followed by an endorsement by Sir Mark Moody-Stuart himself, the former chairman of oil giant Royal Dutch Shell.

We’re talking about divesting from coal investments, and even other fossil fuel funds. According to Bloomberg New Energy Finance, there are as many as 200 organizations that have pledged to cut back or eliminate investments in coal or in fossil fuels more generally. Large universities include Stanford (which took the plunge over a year ago) and Oxford. Large corporations include AXA, France’s largest insurer.

…

Just scan the Fortune 500 and you’ll see it’s the oil and natural gas companies which are some of the largest revenue-makers in the world. Stanford, and others, specifically are divesting from coal, and not “fossil fuels” in general, partly because the latter would “hit the school’s coffers too hard,” as Jeffrey Ball put it in the New Republic.