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Report Reveals $2 Billion of New Financing by Big Banks for Oil and Gas in the Amazon

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

The Pastaza River and the Heart island are seen in the southern Ecuadorian Amazon Rainforest on April 12, 2023. 
Photo by Misha Vallejo Prut for The Washington Post via Getty Images)

“These investments are complicit in genocide: They are killing our culture, our history, and destroying the biodiversity of the Amazon.”

A day after the Brazilian state-run oil firm Petrobras announced it would begin drilling for oil near the mouth of the Amazon River “immediately” after obtaining a license despite concerns over the impact on wildlife, an analysis on Tuesday revealed that banks have added $2 billion in direct financing for oil and gas in the biodiverse Amazon Rainforest since 2024.

The report from Stand.earth—and Petrobras’ license—come weeks before officials in Belém, Brazil prepare to host the 2025 United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP30), where advocates are calling for an investment of $1.3 trillion per year for developing countries to mitigate and adapt to the climate emergency.

Examining 843 deals involving 330 banks, Stand.earth found that US banks JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America, and Citi are among the worst-performing institutions, pouring between $283 million and $326 million into oil and gas in the Amazon.

The biggest spender on oil and gas in the past year has been Itaú Unibanco, the Brazilian bank, which has sent $378 million in financing to oil and gas firms for extractive activities in the Amazon.

“Oil and gas expansion in the Amazon endangers one of the world’s most vital ecosystems and Indigenous peoples who have protected it for millennia,” said Stand.earth. “In addition to fossil fuels leading global greenhouse gas emissions, in the Amazon their extraction also accelerates deforestation, and pollutes rivers and communities.”

The group’s research found that banks have directly financed more than $15 billion to oil and gas companies in the Amazon region since the Paris Agreement, the legally binding climate accord, was adopted in 2016. Nearly 75% of the investment has come from just 10 firms, including Itaú, JPMorgan Chase, Citi, and Bank of America.

The analysis comes weeks after the UN-backed Net-Zero Banking Alliance said it was suspending its operations, following decisions by several large banks to leave the alliance that was established in 2021 to limit banks’ environmental footprint, achieve net-zero emissions in the sector by 2050, and set five-year goals for reducing the institutions’ financing of emissions.

“Around 1,700 Indigenous people live here, and our survival depends on the forest. We ask that banks such as Itaú, Santander, and Banco do Nordeste stop financing companies that exploit fossil fuels in Indigenous territories.”

Devyani Singh, lead researcher for Stand.earth’s new bank scorecard on fossil fuel financing, noted that European banks like BNP Paribas and HSBC have “applied more robust policies to protect the sensitive Amazon rainforest than their peers” and have “significantly dropped in financing ranks.”

But, said Singh, “no bank has yet brought its financing to zero. Every one of these banks must close the existing loopholes and fully exit Amazon oil and gas without delay.”

More than 80% of the banks’ Amazon fossil fuel financing since 2024 has gone to just six oil and gas companies: Petrobras, Canada’s Gran Tierra, Brazil’s Eneva, oil trader Gunvor, and two Peruvian companies: Hunt Oil Peru and Pluspetrol Camisea.

The companies have been associated with human rights violations and have long been resisted by Indigenous people in the Amazon region, who have suffered from health impacts of projects like the Camisea gas project, a decline in fish and game stocks, and a lack of clean water.

“It’s outrageous that Bank of America, Scotiabank, Credicorp, and Itaú are increasing their financing of oil and gas in the Amazon at a time when the forest itself is under grave threat,” said Olivia Bisa, president of the Autonomous Territorial Government of the Chapra Nation in Peru. “For decades, Indigenous Peoples have suffered the heaviest impacts of this destruction. We are calling on banks to change course now: by ending support for extractive industries in the Amazon, they can help protect the forest that sustains our lives and the future of the planet.”

Stand.earth’s report warned that both the Amazon Rainforest—which provides a habitat for 10% of Earth’s biodiversity, including many endangered species—and the people who live there are facing “escalating threats” from oil and gas companies and the firms that finance them, with centuries of exploitation driving the forest “toward an ecological tipping point with irreversible impacts that have global consequences.”

Oil and gas exploration is opening roads into intact parts of the Amazon and other forests, while perpetuating the new fossil fuel emissions that scientists and energy experts have warned have no place on a pathway to limiting planetary heating.

“With warming temperatures, the delicate ecological balance of the Amazon could be upset, flipping it from being a carbon-absorbing rainforest into a carbon-emitting savannah,” reads the group’s report.

Jonas Mura, chief of the Gavião Real Indigenous Territory in Brazil, said “the noise, the constant truck traffic, and the explosions” from Eneva’s projects “have driven away the animals and affected our hunting.”

“Even worse: they are entering without our consent,” said Mura. “Our territory feels threatened, and our families are being directly harmed. Around 1,700 Indigenous people live here, and our survival depends on the forest. We ask that banks such as Itaú, Santander, and Banco do Nordeste stop financing companies that exploit fossil fuels in Indigenous territories.”

“These companies have no commitment to the environment, to Indigenous and traditional peoples, or to the future of the planet,” he added. “These investments are complicit in genocide: They are killing our culture, our history, and destroying the biodiversity of the Amazon.”

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

Orcas comment on killer apes destroying the planet by continuing to burn fossil fuels.
Orcas comment on killer apes destroying the planet by continuing to burn fossil fuels.
Donald Trump urges you to be a Climate Science denier like him. He says that he makes millions and millions for destroying the planet, Burn, Baby, Burn and Flood, Baby, Flood.
Donald Trump urges you to be a Climate Science denier like him. He says that he makes millions and millions for destroying the planet, Burn, Baby, Burn and Flood, Baby, Flood.
Nigel Farage urges you to ignore facts and reality and be a climate science denier like him and his Deputy Richard Tice. He says that Reform UK has received £Millions and £Millions from the fossil fuel industry to promote climate denial and destroy the planet.
Nigel Farage urges you to ignore facts and reality and be a climate science denier like him and his Deputy Richard Tice. He says that Reform UK has received £Millions and £Millions from the fossil fuel industry to promote climate denial and destroy the planet.

Continue ReadingReport Reveals $2 Billion of New Financing by Big Banks for Oil and Gas in the Amazon

The World’s Largest Funder of Fossil Fuel Expansion

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

Environmental activist protest outside CitiBank Headquarters in New York City on April 25, 2023, calling for an end to fossil fuel financing.
 (Photo by Leonardo Munoz / AFP via Getty Images)

Here’s why we will be using our bodies to shut down Citibank’s global headquarters over and over again, this summer.

This summer, along with dozens of others, I’ll be helping to run the Summer of Heat on Wall Street, a campaign of sustained nonviolent civil disobedience against the banks, investors, and insurance companies financing fossil fuel expansion.

As we have written about here already, our plan is simple: using our bodies, we will continually blockade the New York headquarters of the Wall Street giants bankrolling coal, oil, and gas expansion; week after week, we will disrupt the companies disrupting our climate and our planet.

We’re targeting several companies―including the insurance company, Chubb, and the private equity group, KKR―but our number one target will be Citigroup. Here’s why.

Since the adoption of the Paris Agreement in 2015, Citi has provided $204.46 billion in financing to the company’s most rapidly developing new coal, oil, and gas fields. Remarkably, Citi has provided more money to those oil and gas companies than even JPMorgan Chase―the bank that climate activists like to call the “Doomsday Bank.”

To be clear, I’m talking here only about the financing Citi has provided for companies developing new oil and gas reserves, not merely investing in infrastructure to keep the oil pumping from existing reserves. When we take into account financing to all fossil fuel companies, Citi has provided a little shy of $400 billion to coal, oil, and gas companies since 2015. But focusing on expansion is important.

Numerous climate experts, from the International Energy Agency to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, have made it clear that to stave off the worst of climate catastrophe, there must be no investment in new fossil fuel expansion. But last year alone, Citibank provided $14.6 billion to the companies most rapidly expanding their coal, oil, and gas operations.

Citibank’s financing of fossil fuel expansion not only drives climate chaos, it also results in environmental racism. To give just one example, 70% of the air pollution generated by ExxonMobil is dumped on communities of color, contributing to the higher levels of heart disease, strokes, cancer, and other illnesses that are widely associated with living near oil and gas infrastructure.

Citibank’s top fossil fuel client is ExxonMobil. Yet when asked by Congress if she knew what environmental racism was, Citi CEO Jane Fraser replied: “Only vaguely.”

Not content with merely financing fossil fuels, Citi also works to block climate action both from its own investors and the U.S. government.

CEO Jane Fraser is chair of a group called the Financial Services Forum and a board member of the Bank Policy Institute, groups that have fought tooth and nail to weaken climate-financial regulation advanced by the Biden Administration. Citi also donates to several high-profile politicians who work against action on climate, including Congressman Andy Barr who has led the charge in a series of fossil fuel-backed, right-wing attacks designed to prevent the financial industry from taking action on climate.

For the past three years, Citi has faced a shareholder resolution from investors calling for a report on how the bank ensures that the oil, gas, and mining companies it finances respect Indigenous rights and sovereignty. Yet, in spite of Ms. Fraser’s previous claims in 2020 that Citi was committed to being ”an anti-racist institution,” Citi has fought the resolution each year, urging investors to vote against it, even as they remain one of the world’s largest funders of oil and gas in the Amazon rainforest.

Besides its role in the climate crisis and environmental racism, there are plenty other reasons to be angry at Citibank, too. In the early 20th century, Citi actively lobbied the US government to invade and occupy Haiti, which it promptly did, resulting in decades of bloodshed and misery for Haitians. A century later, Citi did as much as any bank to cause the financial crisis of 2008, which led to nearly 3.8 million Americans losing their homes; no bank received a larger bailout from the government than Citi.

And then there’s the fact that Citi is the foreign bank with the largest presence in Israel and a major financier of weapons manufacturers that are currently providing Israel with fighter jets and missiles being used to massacre Palestinians.

All of this is why Citibank is our number one target this summer.

To kick off the campaign, we will disrupt and shut down Citibank’s headquarters in Manhattan every day, all week long. We start on Monday, June 10th. We hope that you join us.

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

‘Just The Beginning’: 50+ Arrested For Blockading Citigroup Bank Over Climate Crimes ›

Continue ReadingThe World’s Largest Funder of Fossil Fuel Expansion

‘Criminal’: Major Banks Funneled $1.8 Trillion to Carbon Bombs Between 2016 and 2022

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

Protesters picket outside a Chase Bank branch in November 2019. (Photo: Erik McGregor/LightRocket via Getty Images)

JPMorgan Chase led the pack with more than $141 billion invested between 2016 and 2022, followed by Citi with $119 billion, and Bank of America with $92 billion.

Major banks funneled more than $150 billion in 2022 toward “carbon bomb” fossil fuel projects that would blow through the world’s chances of limiting global heating to 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels.

The data, published by The Guardian Tuesday, shows that major banks in the U.S., Europe, and China funded the companies behind these projects with a total of $1.8 trillion between 2016 and 2022, with U.S. banks contributing more than half a trillion of that total.

“Criminal,” Nuclear Consulting Group chair Paul Dorfman tweeted in response to the news.

“We need to rapidly decline our production of fossil fuels and support for fossil fuels, whether that’s regulatory or financial.”

The “carbon bombs” are 425 fossil fuel extraction projects identified by The Guardian and other nonprofit and media organizations and compiled in an online database in 2022. Each bomb has the potential to release more than a gigaton of carbon dioxide over its lifetime. At first, it was calculated that igniting all 425 bombs would release emissions more than double the remaining carbon budget that scientists say humans can spend and still have a 50% chance of limiting warming to 1.5°C. However, research published Monday calculated that the remaining carbon budget is actually around 250 gigatons of carbon dioxide, not the 500 previously believed. The carbon bombs would release a combined total of more than 1,000 gigatons, or four times the revised number.

“The budget is so small, and the urgency of meaningful action for limiting warming is so high, [that] the message from [the carbon budget] is dire,” study co-author Joeri Rogelj of Imperial College London told The Guardian Monday.

That narrowing window makes it all the more urgent that banks stop financing fossil fuels, yet that is not what they are doing, according to the analysis of the carbon bomb data completed by French nonprofits Data for Good and Éclaircies, along with European media partners.

The data includes a list of the top ten financial backers of companies operating carbon bombs.

JPMorgan Chase led the pack with more than $141 billion invested between 2016 and 2022, followed by Citi with $119 billion, Bank of America with $92 billion, the Chinese ICBC with $92.2 billion, and BNP Paribas with $71.9 billion. Last year alone, the banks directly or indirectly funded the projects with around $161 billion. This comes despite greenwashing rhetoric from financial institutions pledging to act on climate.

For example, JPMorgan has promised to set goals to reduce the emission intensity of its portfolios for key sectors, including oil and gas, electricity, and auto making.

“We provide financing all across the energy sector: supporting energy security, helping clients accelerate their low-carbon transitions, and increasing clean energy financing with a target of $1 trillion for green initiatives by 2030,” a JPMorgan Chase spokesperson told The Guardian. “We are taking pragmatic steps to meet our 2030 emission intensity reduction targets in the six sectors that account for the majority of global emissions, while helping the world meet its energy needs securely and affordably.”

The data suggests these institutions need to do more and faster.

“We need to rapidly decline our production of fossil fuels and support for fossil fuels, whether that’s regulatory or financial,” Shruti Shukla, a National Resources Defense Council energy campaigner who was not involved with the research, told The Guardian.

In a worse-case scenario, nothing will be done to limit emissions, these carbon bombs will be exploited and burned, and weather will turn ever more extreme. However, if world leaders do succeed in rapidly phasing out fossil fuels, these projects could become stranded assets for the companies and banks that invested in them, and if this happens all at once, it could trigger a financial crash, University of Witten-Herdecke sustainable finance research fellow Jan Fichtner told The Guardian.

To avoid this, the world must work to make fossil fuels less profitable, Fichtner said.

“In a capitalist system, profitability is the most important current,” Fichtner told The Guardian. “You can try to swim against the current, it’s possible, but it’s very, very difficult.”

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

Greenwash detected.

Continue Reading‘Criminal’: Major Banks Funneled $1.8 Trillion to Carbon Bombs Between 2016 and 2022

Faith Leaders, Zombies, Moms and Kids Agree: It’s Time for Wall Street to Stop Funding Fossil Fuels

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Activists are not slowing down: it’s clear that Wall Street holds an outsized responsibility for the death, destruction, and chaos caused by the climate crisis.

Reposted from Common Dreams, licensed under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). Feel free to republish and share widely.

Arielle Swernoff November 18, 2022

Over the past few months, activists around the country and the world have laid the blame for climate disasters at Wall Street’s feet. In a wave of escalated actions under the name “Blame Wall Street,” dozens of groups have called out the financial industry for their financing of fossil fuels and complicity in the climate crisis.

Around the country, people took on elevated amounts of risk in order to increase pressure on the dirty banks, insurance companies, and asset managers financing the climate crisis.

Activists pummeled the banks with actions and protests for months. Over 40 groups across the country held over 50 actions and protests.

In New York City, a week of action targeting Citi began with moms and kids birddogging the bank’s chief sustainability officer, Val Smith, over Citi’s continued funding of Russian oil and gas interests. Later that week, activists infiltrated Citi’s Taste of Tennis gala and interrupted the event with a large banner accusing the bank of funding Russia’s war crimes.

Citi, the US’s largest funder of coal, faced additional protests at greenwashing PR events and at branches in Phoenix, Brooklyn, and other locations. Activists interrupted the speech of Citi’s Chief Sustainability Officer at a sustainable banking conference, and protested Citi, Wells Fargo, and Chase leadership at a Women in Banking event.

Chase emerged from its fall PR events similarly beleaguered. Activists crashed the Chase-sponsored US open, passing out fans to sweaty attendees accusing Chase of funding climate chaos. Later in the month, nine different affinity groups created a circus out of the San Francisco Chase Corporate Challenge, with activists taking over every part of the road race, which hundreds of Chase employees participate in, from the course to the finish line to the after party to protesting in kayaks along the route.

As the world’s largest funder of fossil fuels, it’s no surprise that Chase was protested again and again: Leavenworth, Washington; Worcester, Watertown, and Boston, Massachusetts; Madison, Wisconsin; Fort Lauderdale, Florida; Chicago, Illinois; Providence, Rhode Island; Silver Spring, Maryland; Sacramento, California; New Orleans, Louisiana; and New York City all saw protests at Chase branches or headquarters.

Another major target was asset manager BlackRock, one of the world’s top investors in fossil fuels and climate destruction. BlackRock saw protest after protest at their headquarters, with regular actions from September through November. People sang outside their building, came in costume, held prayer and faith actions, and stormed the headquarters with pitchforks and dumped coal on their escalators. BlackRock is on notice: time to stop financing fossil fuels.

Global climate strike protests also included demands on Wall Street and an end to fossil fuel financing, with activists in Los Angeles, Chicago, New York, and Maryland partnering with youth leaders to demand a safe and livable future. Climate strikers weren’t the youngest activists: in Los Angeles and New York, people protested the greed of the fossil fuel industry alongside their infants and toddlers.

Actions were creative, including art, music, and costumes. In Albany, New York, the red rebel brigade joined a protest outside of TD Bank. In Brooklyn, activists dressed up as Mr. Moneybags and brought bagpipes to branch locations of Citi, Chase, and Bank of America. In Sacramento, Denver, and New Orleans, activists staged Halloween actions, dressing up as endangered species or zombie bankers.

Faith leaders exercised their moral authority in calling on banks and asset managers to stop funding climate disaster. Near Philadelphia, Quaker activists held a prayer vigil outside of the Vanguard HQ, calling on the asset manager to stop financing fossil fuels. In Washington, DC, faith leaders called on the IMF and World Bank to do the same. Faith activists also held protests outside of the Bank of America headquarters in Charlotte, and a Bank of America branch in Springfield, Illinois. Leaders from different faith communities protested multiple times outside of BlackRock’s corporate headquarters in New York City—at one protest, 27 faith leaders were arrested.

Around the country, people took on elevated amounts of risk in order to increase pressure on the dirty banks, insurance companies, and asset managers financing the climate crisis. Dozens of people were arrested this fall—from San Francisco to New York to Pennsylvania to Rhode Island. These activists went to jail in order to show the world the greed of dirty Wall Street actors.

Activists innovated by taking repeated action at financial targets. Instead of one protest, people showed up week after week, increasing the pressure on banks and asset managers. In Phoenix, Arizona, Sacramento, California, Madison, Wisconsin, and Leavenworth, Washington, local actions happened again and again.

People targeted other financial actors, as well. Insurance companies received their fair share of pressure, with actions on Traveller’s, Hartford, and Chubb. One action saw a huge oil derrick parked outside of the home of Chubb CEO, Evan Greenberg. Groups protested the Federal Reserve in Jackson Hole, Wyoming and in Washington, DC, activists protested TIAA’s support for deforestation, there was an action outside of the shareholder meeting of Proctor & Gamble, and a noise protest outside of the homes of the CEOs of the private equity firms KKR and Blackstone. In Sierra Leone, youth activists protested the Central Bank’s support of fossil fuel expansion.

Activists are not slowing down: it’s clear that Wall Street holds an outsized responsibility for the death, destruction, and chaos caused by the climate crisis. With shareholder meetings coming up this spring, banks, insurance companies, asset managers, and pension funds should be ready for increased pressure. Banks are expected to see more shareholder resolutions calling on them to walk the talk on climate than ever before, and the grassroots movement to stop the flow of money to fossil fuels is only growing in energy and momentum. 

On December 14, we are hosting a call to share what’s next in the fight to stop the money pipeline to climate chaos. We hope you will join us.

Reposted from Common Dreams, licensed under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). Feel free to republish and share widely.

Arielle Swernoff

Arielle Swernoff

Arielle Swernoff is an organizer, strategist, and facilitator based in New York City. She is the Stop the Money Pipeline US Banks Campaign Manager.

Continue ReadingFaith Leaders, Zombies, Moms and Kids Agree: It’s Time for Wall Street to Stop Funding Fossil Fuels