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aw requiring larger companies to spend 2 percent of each year's profit on those kinds of initiatives. The law kicks in for companies with a profit of at least $80 million over the past three years.

t outlines nine "pillars" that can fulfill the requirement, one of which is "ensuring environmental sustainability," under which installing solar systems falls. This likely will incentivize more solar development because it's an area that provides businesses with a return in investment.

Companies must use a new auditor every five years and any given auditor can't serve more than two five-year terms; an auditor can't serve more than 20 companies; and auditors can be criminally liable if they knowingly or recklessly omit information in their reports.

However, research conducted concurrently by several different firms, including the Associated Press, suggests that while Harvard might have benefited well from its oil and gas investments in the past, the marketplace, with the world’s increased focus on climate issues, was changing. “Fossil fuel free” investments now stand to earn more

In 2005, in response to increasing pressure from student and human rights groups, the university announced it would be divesting from overseas companies like PetroChina and Sinopec that allegedly had ties with Sudan. However, two years later, the student-run paper, Harvard Crimson, reported that the university still maintained investments in those overseas companies.

What President Faust’s letter didn’t address was the relationship between investment and reputation. Harvard’s reputation is shaped by what it invests in, not just in what it teaches or promotes in research. So is its brand as an impartial, but forward-thinking institution that doesn’t want to be perceived as a “political actor.” But climate change is altering not only how we harness energy but how we view the political landscape. As a poet once told me, “everything is political.” It’s how we deal with that landscape and the choices we make that shapes how others view us.