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As climate panel issues new warning, protesters in 29 states to target banks financing fossil fuels [1]

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Date: 2023-03-20

The report itself states:

B.1 Continued greenhouse gas emissions will lead to increasing global warming, with the best estimate of reaching 1.5°C in the near term in considered scenarios and modelled pathways. Every increment of global warming will intensify multiple and concurrent hazards (high confidence). Deep, rapid, and sustained reductions in greenhouse gas emissions would lead to a discernible slowdown in global warming within around two decades, and also to discernible changes in atmospheric composition within a few years (high confidence). [...] B.3 Some future changes are unavoidable and/or irreversible but can be limited by deep, rapid and sustained global greenhouse gas emissions reduction. The likelihood of abrupt and/or irreversible changes increases with higher global warming levels. Similarly, the probability of low-likelihood outcomes associated with potentially very large adverse impacts increases with higher global warming levels. (high confidence) {3.1}

Thanks to an arcane congressional procedure and the doggedness of the Biden administration, an unprecedented amount of government dollars are now becoming available to individuals, tribes, corporations, and research and development facilities to adopt renewable energy and cut emissions thanks to big portions of the Inflation Reduction Act.

But while these billions of public dollars are being invested in accelerating and equalizing the ongoing green transition, the nation’s four largest banks—Chase, Citibank, Wells Fargo, and Bank of America—are still pumping tons of their money into new fossil fuel projects. The industry wants to keep the profits coming as long as there’s a speck of hydrocarbons left to extract, of course. This means they will do everything they can to impede progress on replacing them. That includes lying and paying others to lie about the damage they knew they were (and are still) causing to the planet.

As Sierra Club executive director Ben Jealous and longtime climate activist and founder of Third Act Bill McKibben wrote in The Guardian last week:

The four biggest banks in America are the four biggest financiers of fossil fuel expansion in the world. These banks didn’t need Donald Trump’s help to sabotage the Paris climate accord: since 2015, they have provided well over $1tn in lending and underwriting to the companies building new coal plants, pipelines, fracking wells, gas export terminals and more. This polluting infrastructure is designed to last decades – long past the point at which science tells us we need to wean off fossil fuels. We can’t shut off all oil and gas overnight, but we can, and must, call on these banks to keep it from expanding, to move money out of dirty energy projects and finance more clean energy instead.

Consequently, members and supporters of 50 environmental and justice groups will engage in hundreds of peaceful protests at branches of these four banks in cities in 29 states across the nation on Tuesday. The idea came from Third Act, which organizes people older than 60. As McKibben notes at his Crucial Years substack, “that’s why, for instance, many of us will be blocking bank doors in rocking chairs in downtown DC. [...] And the message will be clear and simple: stop funding fossil fuel expansion.”

But there is no age limit on participants.

Here’s where you can find an event near you.

Street protests are, of course, not everyone’s choice to promote change. In addition, work, school, some disabilities, and other matters make it difficult or impossible for many people to participate. But anyone can still put the pressure on by writing letters to bank leadership and local newspapers about the need to end these banks’ financing of fossil fuel projects. And if your city or county or state uses one of these banks, pressure can be put on lawmakers to themselves put the pressure on.

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Something else to read:

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[1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2023/3/20/2159166/-As-climate-panel-issues-new-warning-protesters-in-29-states-to-target-banks-financing-fossil-fuels

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