Youth uprising against fossil banks in Teen Vogue

Big Banks Are Funding Fossil Fuel Projects — Let’s Hold Them Accountable

The biggest banks are using your money to fund the climate crisis. We have seen this story before. In 2008, the recklessness of megabanks sank the global economic system. Now, in 2021, the youth climate movement is saying that we’ve had enough. We’re not going to let the banks bring down the entire planet too. On October 29, young people are occupying and shutting down banks across the globe to demand an end to fossil fuel financing and the beginning of a Fossil-Free Future, and we need you to join us.

The pollution from coal, oil, and gas extraction is heating our planet and increasing the severity of natural disasters. Fossil fuel executives and politicians have known this for decades. Yet the fossil fuel industry continues to expand, building and installing new infrastructure and expanding and replacing existing infrastructure to extract, combust, and transport fossil fuels. From the Line 3 pipeline being built in Northern Minnesota to the TransMountain Pipeline being built in Western Canada, the fossil fuel industry won’t stop ravaging our planet and destroying our communities. Since we know they won’t stop expanding of their own volition, we have to make them. So we’re going after their money.

Fossil fuel companies cannot operate without financial support. They need investors, insurance, and loans. The banks, insurance companies, and asset managers providing these funds continue to funnel money into fossil fuels despite knowing the immediate and long-term destruction their money causes. The world’s megabanks have lent the industry more than $3 trillion since 2016, when the Paris Climate Accord was signed, including the top four U.S. banks — JP Morgan Chase, Citibank, Bank of America, and Wells Fargo. JPMorgan Chase, the biggest of them all, has sent the oil and gas industry more than a quarter trillion dollars in the past five years.

The role of the big banks in the climate crisis is not surprising. These are banks, after all, that profit from our student debt, prey on and exploit communities of color, and invest in countless industries that undergird massive inequality. However, they aren’t invincible, and it doesn’t have to be this way. Banks, like all companies, care about their public image and reputation.

Read the full article at Teen Vogue.