*Update* For the next eight weeks we’re taking the fight to the shareholder meetings of every major US bank and several major insurance companies. This is a real opportunity for change, because every single shareholder meeting will have a vote on whether or not to end support for fossil fuel expansion.
If you want to learn more, join the Campaign rally *tonight* April 5th online at 5PM PT / 8PM ET. During the online rally, we’ ll hear from Senator Elizabeth Warren, Nemo Guiquita of the Confederation of Indigenous Nationalities of the Ecuadorian Amazon; Roishetta Ozane with Healthy Gulf; Terrell Iron Shell of the Future Coalition, and Third Act! founder, Bill McKibben. We’ll also share plans and tell you how to get involved, and take action together to demand that banks, insurance companies, and investors take meaningful action this shareholder season. Join us April 5 for more.
Did you see the IPCC report? The short version is that it says we need to move away from fossil fuels much faster than we have been in order to prevent climate chaos. But while time is short, progress is possible because of the falling costs of clean energy.
What’s missing, of course, is a massive investment in those cheaper, endlessly available clean energy sources. You know we’ve been pushing hard to get Joe Biden to follow through on his pledge to build back fossil free and use the power of the federal government to scale up clean energy production.
But there’s another pathway to avoid climate chaos: Wall Street. Over the last few years every one of the biggest banks has signed the Paris Climate agreement and pledged to stop investing in climate chaos. But instead of following through, last year the six largest Wall Street banks alone provided over $220 billion in financing to coal, oil, and gas corporations.
The Dakota Access & Line 3 pipelines, along with Formosa Plastics, and countless other fossil fuel boondoggles, are all examples of projects that were forced upon Tribal Nations, First Nations and Indigenous Peoples without consent, threatening communities, waterways, and sacred lands in the process.
For banks and insurance companies to deliver on their support of the goals of the Paris Agreement, they must stop supporting the expansion of such a toxic industry.