Citigroup

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

‘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

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.”

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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