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Protesters occupy City Of London insurers’ offices demanding they reject climate-wrecking projects in UK and Africa

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Extinction Rebellion occupy Lloyds of London insurance companies 18 October 2023.
Extinction Rebellion occupy Lloyds of London insurance companies 18 October 2023.

Ten City of London insurance companies are targeted by activists calling on them to stop insuring West Cumbia coalmine and East Africa Crude Oil Pipeline NOW!

Hundreds of protesters occupied City of London offices of ten Lloyd’s of London insurers demanding they rule out insuring the proposed West Cumbria coal mine and the East Africa Crude Oil Pipeline (EACOP).

The occupations started as a huge crowd gathered outside Standard Bank. The protests are in collaboration with Fossil Free London’s “Oily Money Out” mass action – at which Greta Thunberg was arrested yesterday – and in solidarity with Extinction Rebellion Gauteng in South Africa.  In Johannesburg activists were recently met with brutality by security personnel hired by Standard Bank as they peacefully called for dialogue to end the financing of new coal projects.

The protesters marched waving banners saying “Don’t Insure EACOP” and “Don’t Insure West Cumbria Mine” to three high profile buildings including the “Walkie Talkie” where in a coordinated swoop, activists occupied the office foyers of Ascot, Talbot, Chaucer, Markel, Allied World, CNA Hardy, Tokio Marine Kiln, Sirius International and Lancashire Syndicates. The activists are staging a sit-in and refusing to leave.

Insurers from Lloyd’s of London have come under increasing pressure to rule out offering insurance to both the West Cumbria coal mine and EACOP, including protests at offices across the UK with hundreds of students entering the job market refusing to work for them.

Claude Fourcroy, a spokesperson for Money Rebellion said: “We are calling on all the banks and insurers behind the West Cumbria mine and East Africa Crude Oil Pipelines to cut their ties now. Both of these projects will fuel climate breakdown. Lloyd’s of London and the insurers in its market sit at the centre of a web of climate wreckers in the City of London, alongside Barclays and HSBC.”

Community members from Cumbria and Uganda joined the protests, sharing the united call to insurers and banks to stop underwriting fossil fuel projects.  The UK Climate Change Committee warned that the West Cumbria Mine would increase UK’s domestic emissions and make the government’s legally-binding domestic emissions budgets difficult to meet.

The massive 1443 km East Africa Crude Oil Pipeline will wreak havoc on communities, jeopardise ecosystems and water supplies. and eliminate the possibility of Earth remaining habitable. There can be no new fossil fuels anywhere if global heating is to remain under 1.5C.

Scientists say we are dangerously close to crossing the globally agreed threshold of 1.5C this year. Neither project will proceed without financial and insurance backing.

Andrew Taylor, Coal Action Network said: “West Cumbria Mining Ltd wants to dig coal here right up until 2049 – when we’re supposed to have reached net zero by 2050! They’re not looking at the impact of how burning it would damage the climate and nature.  The UK government talks about us having energy security but the truth is, if the mine goes ahead, 85% of the coal would be exported.”

Patience, a youth activist from Fridays for Future Uganda said: “We have gathered here today to demand that insurers cut ties with EACOP. By supporting this deadly fossil fuel project they undermine any climate commitments they have made. People in Uganda are facing human rights violations in the name of this project. This has to end.”

Fossil Free London is simultaneously disrupting the Canary Wharf offices of Total Energies, a majority shareholder in EACOP.

The protests come on the second day of the Fossil Free London “Oily Money Out” protests targeting the Energy Intelligence Forum at the InterContinental Park Lane Hotel in London, where fossil fuel corporations, including Shell, Total and Equinor, are talking to government ministers. The Forum is taking place in the run up to the COP28 Climate Conference, which has already been captured by the fossil fuel industry, with the appointment of Al Jaber, chief executive of the Abu Dhabi National Oil Company (ADNOC) as the COP28 President.

Banner reads Oily Money Out. Protests London 18 October 2023.
Banner reads Oily Money Out. Protests London 18 October 2023.


Joanna Warrington, campaigner with Fossil Free London said: “We can’t allow London to welcome the climate-wrecking elite when droughts, floods, and wildfires rage across the world. London’s banks and finance sector have been ignoring all the warning signs while pouring billions into fossil fuel expansion. Their profit is our loss. Financing new fossil fuel developments is incompatible with a safe future.”

Continue ReadingProtesters occupy City Of London insurers’ offices demanding they reject climate-wrecking projects in UK and Africa

‘This Is Absurd’: Major Banks Continue to Fund Climate Chaos in Global South

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Original article by OLIVIA ROSANE republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). 

ActionAid found that since the Paris agreement, banks have funded the largest Big Ag companies doing business in the Global South to the tune of $370 billion and the fossil fuel sector to the tune of $3.2 trillion.

Since the international community promised to limit global heating to 1.5°C above preindustrial levels, the world’s major banks have funneled 20 times more money to climate-polluting industries in the Global South than Global North governments have given those same countries to address the climate emergency.

That’s just one of the findings of How the Finance Flows: The Banks Fueling the Climate Crisis, an ActionAid report released Monday.

“This report names the biggest offenders in the banking world and calls on them to see that they are destroying the planet, while harming the present and future for their children,” Ugandan climate activist Vanessa Nakate wrote in the foreword. “It’s time to hold financial institutions to account, and demand that they end their funding of destructive activity.”

The report focuses on the financing of two major climate-heating industries in the 134 nations of the Global South: fossil fuels and industrial agriculture.

“People generally know that fossil fuels are the number one cause of greenhouse gas emissions. But what is less understood is that industrial agriculture is actually the second biggest cause of climate emissions,” Teresa Anderson, the global lead on climate justice at ActionAid International, said during a press briefing ahead of the report’s release.

This is because of the sector’s link to deforestation, as well as the emissions required to produce industrial fertilizers, she added.

In total, since the 2015 Paris agreement, banks have funded the largest Big Ag companies doing business in the Global South to the tune of $370 billion and the oil, gas, and coal sectors to the tune of $3.2 trillion.

“Global banks often make public declarations that they are addressing climate change, but the scale of their continued support of fossil fuels and industrial agriculture is simply staggering.”

The top three banks that invested the most in these sectors were the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China at $154.3 billion, China CITIC Bank at $134.7 billion, and the Bank of China at $125.9 billion. Citigroup came in fourth at $104.5 billion, followed by HSBC at $80.8 billion.

While China features prominently in the report as the world’s largest economy, Anderson noted that much of what it produces ends up purchased by consumers in the Global North.

The top three banks in the Americas funding big agriculture and fossil fuels were Citigroup, JPMorgan Chase, and Bank of America. While Citigroup was the leading regional funder of fossil fuels, JP Morgan Chase gave the most to industrial agriculture.

In Europe, the top funders after HSBC were BNP Paribas, Société Générale, and Barclays, while Mitsubishi UFJ Financial rounded out the top Asian funders.

Where is all that money going? When it comes to agriculture, the leading recipient was Bayer, which bought out Monsanto in 2018. Banks have given it $20.6 billion to do business in the Global South since 2016.

Much of the fossil fuel money went to China’s State Power Investment Corporation and other Chinese companies; commodities trader Trafigura; and the usual fossil fuel suspects like ExxonMobil, BP, Shell, Saudi Aramco, and Petrobras.

“This is absurd,” Anderson said of the findings. “Global banks often make public declarations that they are addressing climate change, but the scale of their continued support of fossil fuels and industrial agriculture is simply staggering.”

ActionAid called the report the “flagship” document of its Fund Our Future campaign to redirect global money from climate crisis causes to climate solutions. The report calls on banks to make good on their climate promises and stop funding fossil fuels and deforestation, as well as to put additional safeguards in place to protect the rights of local communities, raise the ambition of their goals to reach “real zero” emissions, and improve transparency and other measures to make sure the projects they fund are behaving ethically.

“This can be stopped,” Farah Kabir, the country director of ActionAid Bangladesh, said during the press briefing. “The banks cannot continue to fund fossil fuel industries and industrial agriculture.”

In addition, the report offers recommendations to Global North governments to ensure a just transition to a sustainable future for everyone. These included setting stricter regulations for the banking, fossil fuel, and agricultural industries as well as ending public subsidies for these sectors and channeling the money to positive solutions like renewable energy and agroecology.

However, the form that funds take when sent to the Global South makes a big difference, said ActionAid USA executive director Niranjali Amerasinghe. Instead of coming in the form of private loans, it needs to be in the form of public money.

“Providing more loans to countries that are already in significant debt distress is not going to support their transition to a climate-compatible future,” she said.

One reason that loans are counterproductive is that nations that accept them are forced to provide a return on investment, and currently the main industries that offer this are in fact fossil fuels and industrial agriculture.

In addition to public funds, debt forgiveness or restructuring and new taxes could also help these countries with their green transition. If companies like Exxon or Bayer doing business in the Global South “were taxed in an equitable way, that would allow those governments to raise public revenue that can then be used to support climate action,” Amerasinghe said.

In particular, the report emphasizes agroecology as a climate solution that should be funded in Global South countries.

“Climate change is real in Zambia.”

Mary Sakala, a frontline smallholder farmer from Zambia, spoke at the press briefing about how the climate crisis and current agricultural policy put a strain on her community.

“Climate change is real in Zambia,” she said, adding that it had brought flooding, droughts, pests, and diseases that meant that “families currently, as I’m speaking right now, sleep on an empty stomach.”

Sakala saw hope in agroecology, which would help with food security and resilience, and make farmers less dependent on the government and large companies.

“We need policies to allow [us] to conserve our environment in a cultural way, to help us eat our food,” Sakala said. “We want… every seed to be utilized and saved and shared in solidarity.”

And she said that the companies and governments of the Global North have a duty to help them get there.

“Those people who are continuing to pollute and let the climate change increase, those people need to pay us, because we are suffering from the things that others are doing,” she said.

Original article by OLIVIA ROSANE republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). 

Continue Reading‘This Is Absurd’: Major Banks Continue to Fund Climate Chaos in Global South

Net-zero banks show little sign of slowing down fossil fuel financing

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https://www.energymonitor.ai/finance/banking/net-zero-banks-show-little-sign-of-slowing-down-fossil-fuel-financing/

A criticism often levelled at Mark Carney’s Glasgow Financial Alliance for Net Zero initiative (GFANZ) and in particular its banking arm, the Net Zero Banking Alliance (NZBA), is that member banks are not required to set firm policies limiting fossil fuel investment.

New figures published by NGO the Rainforest Action Network (RAN) in its annual ‘Banking on Climate Chaos’ report reveal that the world’s 60 largest banks by asset size, the majority (49) of which have made net-zero commitments, have invested $5.5trn dollars in the fossil fuel industry since the Paris Agreement was signed seven years ago. 

This new data, which records banks’ lending, debt underwriting and equity capital market activities, adjusting each transaction according to how much exposure the borrower or issuer has to a specific sector, shows that in 2022 alone, the 60 banks provided $673bn to more than 3,000 companies engaged in fossil fuel activities, including $150bn specifically to the top 100 companies expanding fossil fuels. 

The total sum for 2022 represents a 9% decrease compared with 2021 financing, although RAN’s report dismisses the idea that this reduction indicates “a positive, long-term trend”. This is because a more significant trend observed over the past year, given the current context of “rising interest rates, a strong dollar, and wartime profits”, is that several large oil majors that often account for a significant share of bank loans no longer need banks’ support following a year of bumper profits. 

…

https://www.energymonitor.ai/finance/banking/net-zero-banks-show-little-sign-of-slowing-down-fossil-fuel-financing/

Continue ReadingNet-zero banks show little sign of slowing down fossil fuel financing

Shareholder Resolutions Push Big Banks to Phase Out Fossil Fuel Financing

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Original article republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0).

Protest placard reads Greenwash detected

Any climate commitment from a bank that is still financing fossil fuel expansion is greenwashing, pure and simple,” said a Stop the Money Pipeline campaigner.

BRETT WILKINS Jan 24, 2023

Taking aim at Wall Street banks financing the oil, gas, and coal extraction fueling the climate crisis, a coalition of institutional investors on Tuesday announced the filing of climate-related shareholder resolutions in an effort to force “more climate-friendly policies that better align with” the firms’ public commitments to combating the planetary emergency.

In the resolutions, members of the Interfaith Center on Corporate Responsibility (ICCR) and Harrington Investments asked six banks—Bank of America, Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan Chase, Morgan Stanley, Citigroup, and Wells Fargo—to enact policies phasing out fossil fuel finance, disclose plans for aligning their financing with their stated near-term emissions reduction goals, and to set absolute end-of-decade emissions reduction targets for their energy sector financing.

Shareholders also filed climate resolutions at four companies—Chubb, Travelers, The Hartford, and Berkshire Hathaway—that insure fossil fuel projects.

“Each of the major banks has publicly committed to aligning its financing with the goals of the Paris agreement to achieve net-zero emissions by 2050, a target widely considered imperative to avoid catastrophic climate impacts and financial losses,” ICCR said in a statement. “Scientific consensus shows that new fossil fuel expansion is incompatible with achieving net-zero by 2050, yet these banks continue to invest billions of dollars each year in new fossil fuel development—a fact corroborated by a new Reclaim Finance report released last week.”

As Stop the Money Pipeline—a coalition of over 200 groups seeking to hold “financial backers of climate chaos accountable”—noted:

A slate of resolutions calling for policies to phase out financing for fossil fuel expansion was filed by the same investors at U.S. banks in 2022. They received between 9% and 13% support, which was a significant milestone for these first-of-their-kind proposals. This year’s fossil fuel financing proposals have been updated to encourage banks to finance clients’ low-carbon transition so long as those plans are credible and verified. The previous resolutions were supported by many major institutional investors, including the New York State and New York City Common Retirement Funds.

New in 2023 are the resolutions on absolute emissions reduction targets for energy sector financing filed by the New York City and New York State comptrollers, and the resolutions calling for disclosure of climate transition plans filed by As You Sow. The day before the resolutions were filed, Denmark’s largest bank, Danske, announced a phaseout of corporate financing for companies engaged in new coal, oil and, gas development.

“Any climate commitment from a bank that is still financing fossil fuel expansion is greenwashing, pure and simple,” Arielle Swernoff, U.S. banks campaign manager at Stop the Money Pipeline, said in a statement. “By supporting these resolutions, shareholders can hold banks accountable to their own climate commitments, effectively manage risk, and protect people and the planet.”

Dan Chu, executive director of the Sierra Club Foundation—which led the filing at JPMorgan Chase—lamented that “all major U.S. banks continue to finance billions of dollars for new coal, oil, and gas projects every year. Such financing undermines the banks’ net-zero commitments and exposes investors to material risks.”

“These shareholder resolutions simply ask banks to align their promises with their actions and to adopt policies to phase out the financing of new fossil fuel development,” Chu added.

Referring to a warning from the International Energy Agency, Kate Monahan of Trillium Asset Management—which spearheaded the Bank of America filing—said that “we will not be able to achieve the Paris agreement’s goal of limiting warming to 1.5°C if banks continue to finance new fossil fuel exploration and development.”

“Bank of America has publicly committed to the Paris agreement but continues to finance fossil fuel expansion with no phaseout plan, exposing itself to accusations of greenwashing and reputational damage,” Monahan contended. ” By continuing to fund new fossil fuels, Bank of America and others are taking actions with potentially catastrophic consequences.”

Our work is licensed under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). Feel free to republish and share widely.

Original article republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0).

Continue ReadingShareholder Resolutions Push Big Banks to Phase Out Fossil Fuel Financing