As the consequences of climate change become increasingly frequent and severe, so much so that the UN Human Rights Committee is asking the United States to explain what it is doing to protect the “right to life”, banks are INCREASING funding for fossil fuel projects.

Geneva – Today, the UN Human Rights Committee made public its request that the US government provide information regarding policies and measures implemented by the government to protect the right to life from the adverse impacts of climate change. This marks the first time that the oldest human rights treaty body has raised an issue with any State in relation to climate change.

UN Human Rights Committee Flags US Must Address Climate Change to Protect the Right to Life, Common Dreams, April 4, 2019

“Banks are funding a future that will cost the lives of the next seven generations of life and beyond… Any financial institution that cannot read the writing on the wall should be stripped of its social license to operate and be held accountable for their investments because those investments are threatening our very lives.”
Tom Goldtooth, executive director of the Indigenous Environmental Network

Time To Sue The Banks For Underwriting The Climate Crisis, by Steve Rushton, Occupy.com, April 7, 2019

The Rainforest Action Network (RAN) has published a vast array of data about banks and fossil fuel funding, Banking on Climate Change.

You can help put pressure on the banks. Use this link to send an email message to the banking institutions pictured below.
Stop Funding the Climate Crisis.

Taking action against banks has been one strategy climate activists have used for many years. Although as it says above, banks are increasing fossil fuel funding, there have been some success stories. In November, 2015, during a nationwide day of action prior to a Morgan Stanley stockholder’s meeting, thousands of petitions asking the company to stop funding coal projects were delivered. At the stockholders meeting, it was decided to stop funding coal projects. In Indianapolis a few of us delivered the petition to the Morgan Stanley manager.

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I was involved in a number of efforts to defund the Dakota Access Pipeline. The Quaker meeting I attended in Indianapolis, North Meadow Circle of Friends, closed our Chase bank account in support of defunding the Dakota Access pipeline.

I wrote about my personal experience in closing my Chase bank account in this article in the Quaker Earthcare Witness publication, Befriending Creation,
One Dollar at a Time: Defunding DAPL

One of the main ways we supported the water protectors at Standing Rock during the Dakota Access pipeline struggle was by standing in silence in front of the Chase Bank and the PNC Bank in downtown Indianapolis, while those with bank accounts there went inside to close their accounts. That day $110,000 was withdrawn from those banks.

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On February, 2018, the weekend the Super Bowl was played at the USBank stadium there, a van full of us went to Minneapolis to demonstrate in front of the USBank headquarters

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