S.T.

August 2021 Digest

Dear Anthony,

The publication of Part One of the IPCC’s Sixth Assessment report
at the beginning of August sends yet another clear warning ahead
of the Glasgow climate summit: we don't have another decade to
waste, and only rapid and drastic reductions in greenhouse gases in
this decade can prevent climate breakdown. The IPCC warns that
temperatures are likely to rise by more than 1.5C, bringing
widespread extreme weather. As climate catastrophes continue to
be more and more frequent in every corner of the globe, banks are,
however, far from taking the action needed to avoid climate collapse.

This month we learned Deutsche Bank, JPMorgan Chase, and
Standard Chartered participated in a massive USD 1 billion loan to
Adani Enterprises, a subsidiary of the Adani Group, which is building
what would be the biggest coal mine in Australia, the Carmichael
thermal coal project.


This project would add billions of tonnes of CO2
into the atmosphere, destroying the land and culture
of the Wangan and Jagalingou people,
increasing shipping through the Great Barrier Reef, and
opening up the Galilee Basin.

Meanwhile, the world's biggest carbon sink is crossing the tipping
point: according to scientists, the Amazon rainforest now emits
more carbon dioxide than it absorbs. And the best guardians of the
forest, Indigenous Peoples, are under serious threat. This month,
the Forests & Finance coalition warned investors about the risk and
the irreversible consequences of the anti-environment and anti-social
 legislative agenda in the Brazilian Congress in a letter sent to 80
financial institutions.

Also in this month's newsletter, bank ties to companies supporting
the military junta in Myanmar are deeper than first thought. And a
new dodgy deal on Okavango oil & gas drilling in Namibia &
Botswana, affecting a biodiverse area that is home to Africa's
largest remaining population of savanna elephants and other
threatened megafauna species.

With best wishes,

The BankTrack Team.

Read more:
Banks break promise and loan US$1 billion to Adani coal miner

Forests & Finance Coalition warns foreign investors

East African Crude Oil Pipeline: new update on risks



Central banks    still fueling climate crisis

Oil Change International, Aug 24, 2021

Central banks could play a critical role in catalyzing the rapid shift of
financial flows away from oil, fossil gas, and coal. However, to date,
central banks have instead tinkered at the edges, a new report by Oil
Change International finds. Read more...

October 26, 2021



SNIPPET:


[the Principles] continue to allow for finance for fossil fuel projects…
from coalfired power plants to new oil extraction and pipeline
projects

Detailed Report with Executive Summary

Dec 07, 2021

Senate Banking Committee O&G Donations


Source: OpenSecrets.org

BailoutWatch

March 1, 2022

Erika Thi Patterson Action Center on Race and the Economy
<email@acrecampaigns.org>

We're demanding these 4 banks stop funding the 🦖 fossil fuel industry

If you bank with 🦕 Chase, 🦖 Citibank, 🦕 Wells Fargo or 🦖 Bank of America, please
join thousands of other customers and sign on to the Customers for Climate Justice Open
Letter to 🎩 CEOs.

BILL MCKIBBEN from The Crucial Years <billmckibben@substack.com>

Dec 14, 2022, 9:22 PM


and in the process puts serious pressure on America's 🦖rogue financiers
HSBC Bank—Europe’s biggest by total assets—announced today they would no longer provide financing for new oil and gas fields. HSBC is not a particularly virtuous enterprise—it began in Hong Kong in 1865 with an early specialty in the opium trade; earlier this year it was censured for lying about its climate change efforts in its ads; in between there’s been every flavor of scandal that big-time capitalism can produce. And even this step is far from sufficient—they’re apparently still willing to finance new infrastructure like LNG terminals. But the activists who have been pushing them for years to take this step have won the world a huge victory.

This is a fighting newsletter and the fight is so crucial it comes to you for free. But if paying the modest subscription fee would not put you in financial hardship, it would be a lovely gesture and help keep it going!

That’s mostly because the pledge sets a new baseline that we can use to make other banks sweat. Especially the four big American banks—Chase, Citi, Wells-Fargo, and Bank of America—that are also the four biggest lenders to the fossil fuel industry. They lost a lot of cover today; it’s no longer possible for them to pretend that this kind of lending is business as usual. Scientists have said continued fossil fuel expansion will break the back of the climate system; the International Energy Agency said this kind of financing had to stop in 2021 if we were to meet the Paris climate targets; and now one of the brotherhood of global megabanks has broken ranks and gone along.

We will use that win for all its worth as we pressure those rogue American banks. As many of you know, a coalition of 19 groups (and counting) has a big day of action planned for Tuesday March 21 (32123!); we’ll be inside and outside branches of those four banks across America, cutting up credit cards, sitting down in lobbies, and in general trying to make people understand that for any American with more than $125,000 in the mainstream banking system, it’s likely producing more carbon than all the actions of their daily life. We want them to cease lending for the expansion of the fossil fuel enterprise; we will be weaning ourselves off fossil fuels for some years, so normal banking arrangements are okay. But it’s truly insane to keep growing the size of the hydrocarbon empire.

The fossil fuel industry can see this threat coming; that’s why they’ve unleashed the treasurers of red states to threaten the banks with the loss of their business if they take this step. Happily, blue city and state treasurers have more money, and they’re rising to the challenge. (Read this thread from [New York City’s comptroller Brad Lander to get a sense of their rising ire). I can tell simply by the outpouring of vitriol from 👿 climate deniers on Twitter today that HSBC touched a nerve—in Elon’s new world, one gent respondeded to my sharing of an article with the news in these immortal words: “Blood is on your hands super stupid syphilletic gang **** reject.”

But the real anger is doubtless in the C-suites of those 🦖 big four American banks. I remember years ago, early in the fossil-fuel divestment campaign, when I was sitting with the president of a big college (along the Charles, and ivied). I started listing the names of the noble but small colleges that had acted on principle early on to divest, and he listened for a minute and then hissed “you haven’t gotten a single big research university.” Within the next few years Oxford, Cambridge, the University of California, the University of Michigan, Columbia and so on had divested; it was only a matter of time before that ivied institution along the Charles followed suit. That’s where the big banks find themselves today. Amalgamated Bank and Beneficial State deserve huge credit for doing the right thing, but they’re not fatcats. HSBC undeniably is. It’s got $4 billion in assets, it’s #13 in the world in fossil fuel lending. It’s in the club.

It doesn’t mean the fight will be easy—these banks are the capital in capitalism. But it means it’s possible if we push.

In other news from the world of climate and energy:

+Robert Brulle and Christian Downie have an absolutely crucial new paper showing just what vast sums the fossil fuel industry spends on lobbying and advertising. Their trade associations alone have plowed $3.4 billion into the job in recent years. As Brulle said to me this afternoon, “it is a testament to the climate movement that it’s had any successes.”

+The highly respected science journal Nature published an important commentary this week on “degrowth,” which its authors defined like this:

Wealthy economies should abandon growth of gross domestic product (GDP) as a goal, scale down destructive and unnecessary forms of production to reduce energy and material use, and focus economic activity around securing human needs and well-being. This approach, which has gained traction in recent years, can enable rapid decarbonization and stop ecological breakdown while improving social outcomes. It frees up energy and materials for low- and middle-income countries in which growth might still be needed for development. Degrowth is a purposeful strategy to stabilize economies and achieve social and ecological goals, unlike recession, which is chaotic and socially destabilizing and occurs when growth-dependent economies fail to grow.

I think it’s an inelegant name for an important set of ideas

+Kansans are trying to clean up the biggest oil spill in the hsitory of the Keystone pipeline. Thank heaven we managed to block the even larger KXL.

+The interesting breakthrough in fusion energy—which won’t bear commercial fruit for many many years—is an apt reminder that we have a large fusion reactor 93 million miles up in the air.
https://open.substack.com/pub/billmckibben/p/a-big-bank-actually-does-something

April 11, 2023


Download the briefing
Translations: Japanese


This briefing explains how Japan’s new “Green Transformation (GX)” policy, approved by its Cabinet in February 2023, is a greenwashing exercise designed to benefit corporate interests and prolong the use of fossil fuels at a time when renewable energy solutions are reliable, available, cleaner, and cheaper.


The strategy under GX relies heavily on 🦕 LNG; ammonia co-firing; fossil hydrogen; and carbon capture, utilization and storage. These technologies would prolong the lifespan of 🦖 fossil fuels at a time when countries need to phase them out. Japan is using its diplomatic might to promote the GX strategy at the G7 and within the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN). The policy also aims to deploy these technologies across Asia under the guise of “decarbonization.”

However, communities and groups across Asia, including Bangladesh, Indonesia, and the Philippines, are rejecting Japan’s dirty energy strategy and are mobilizing to stop Japan from derailing the energy transition.

Japan needs to stop investing precious resources in volatile, dirty energy and unproven technologies. As Japan prepares to host the G7 summit in May 2023, it will face increasing pressure until it places clean energy and climate security above Japanese corporate interests.

Read the full briefing here.

Welcome to BankTrack's monthly digest for May. This month we learned that the amount of 💰 money paid to 🦖 oil & gas 😈🐷 shareholders in dividends since 2020 could have fully covered the investment in clean fuels needed to align with a 1.5C pathway between now and 2030. A shocking   misallocation of capital that has stoked the public anger seen at fossil fuel company AGMs this month.

May has seen the BankTrack team pay visits to the AGMs of Barclays, Standard Chartered, HSBC; Crédit Agricole and Société Générale, together with allies and often accompanied by representatives of communities affected by the damaging extractivist projects these banks keep financing. We've also tracked other AGMs attended by our partners, including those of JPMorgan, Rabobank and BNP Paribas. Check the Twitter threads in the hyperlinks for details and videos.

Also this month: A key publication from our Nature campaign together with Feedback and Mighty Earth exposes the relationship between Barclays and meat-packing giant JBS, and explores why this is a problem. Significant wins for the campaign against financing the East African Crude Oil Pipeline, which lost two key lenders in May. And pressure mounts on Austria's Raiffeisen Bank for a clean, moral exit from Russia, where the bank continues making massive profits and paying taxes to support Putin's illegal war.

See below for the details on these stories and more.
https://www.banktrack.org/banktrack_news#year=2023

The 🦕🦖 Hydrocarbon 👹 Hellspawn Fossil Fuelers DID THE Clean Energy  Inventions suppressing, Climate Trashing, human health depleting CRIME.  Since they have ALWAYS BEEN liars and conscience free crooks 🦀, they are trying to AVOID   DOING THE TIME or PAYING THE FINE! Don't let them get away with it! Pass it on!