Oil Watchdog

Accusing UC Berkeley of selling out to the oil industry, about 40
protesters with a makeshift, 8-foot-high Trojan horse demonstrated on
campus Thursday against the $500 million contract between petroleum
giant BP and a research partnership headed by Cal.

The demonstrators also poured molasses on the sidewalk to represent petroleum or biofuel.

One protester dressed as a "BP vampire" pretended to suck up the
goop and told another demonstrator representing a developing country:
"We’re stealing food from you to feed our SUVs." Critics say the huge
acreage needed for biofuel plants could displace food crops.

The target of the protest is the 10-year UC-BP deal, announced
in February, that would fund research into biofuels and sources of
cleaner and more economical energy.

The contract between BP, which is putting up the $500 million,
and a partnership of Cal, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and the
University of Illinois, had been expected to be signed earlier this
summer but ran into a delay, with university officials saying they
expect it to be approved within two weeks.

Thursday’s protest began on campus and moved across the street
to the sidewalk in front of the Bancroft Hotel, where a 6-foot swath of
molasses was poured.

The hotel is hosting a two-day conference beginning today on
biofuels and agriculture. It is co-sponsored by the newly established
Energy Biosciences Institute (EBI), created to carry out much of the
BP-funded research.

"UC Berkeley is becoming an extension campus of Big Oil U,"
John Simpson of the Santa Monica-based Foundation for Taxpayer and
Consumer Rights said at the protest.

Most of the demonstrators, wearing "I didn’t enroll in UC-BP"
T-shirts, appeared to be UC students. They say the university’s
research agenda is being set by corporate interests.

Defending the BP arrangement was Cal Professor David Zilberman,
director of the Center for Sustainable Resource Development and host of
the conference on biofuels and agriculture.

"I think (the energy institute), if it is successful, would be great for the environment," he said after the protest.

Zilberman said the university’s expertise can help solve major
problems facing the world and that academic-corporate cooperation can
not only support needed research that the university lacks money to
conduct but also enable the research to have a real-world impact.

The institute "is like the ladder that brings the ivory tower to reality," he said.

Stanford biologist Chris Somerville, who is expected to move to
Berkeley and head the energy institute, said the BP funding is not
diverting the university’s research agenda but helping to realize it.

"The overwhelming support by the Berkeley faculty for the EBI
research process is a good indication of the pent-up demand for funding
in the area of renewable energy research," he said.

Dan Kammen, a professor in the campus Energy and Resources
Group and a key organizer of the EBI project, said he sympathizes with
many points raised by protesters and that the contract with BP should
respect "the issues of open access, and a research agenda set by
university researchers, not simply a private company."

Speaking against the BP arrangement at the protest were
anthropology Professor Laura Nader, who said she came to Berkeley "to
teach at a public university, not a corporatized university," and
insect biology Professor Miguel Altieri, who said biofuels will have
devastating environmental impacts, including destruction of
food-growing land, resulting in higher food prices and hunger.