Environmental activists in New York continued a direct action campaign against one of the city’s leading banking empires, Citi, accusing the group of fueling the climate crisis.
Outraged by Citi’s funding of polluting businesses, activists have launched a “heatwave summer” campaign that includes protests and flyers, combined with an online lobbying campaign.
Every week, dozens of protesters gather at Citigroup’s gleaming Lower Manhattan headquarters to demand it change its fossil fuel investment policy, following in the footsteps of European activists who have done the same to the Eurozone banking giants.
Nearly 600 people have been arrested in the protests and sit-ins in New York so far.
In June, four activist groups — Climate Organizing Hub, New York Communities for Change, Planet Over Profit and Stop the Money Pipeline — launched the campaign against Citi, along with dozens of other groups.
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“We met with them for years and you felt like we were getting nowhere,” said protest organizer Jonathan Westin, who vowed to continue the campaign until Citi changed course.
“We felt we had to bring it to their doorstep.”
Oil and gas exploration in the Arctic, the Amazon and the seabed along with thermal power plants, coal mines and LNG plants have received more than $6.9 trillion from banks since 2016.
This was the year the Paris Agreement was signed to try to keep global warming below 1.5 degrees Celsius.
In 2023, the world’s 60 largest banks committed $750 billion to fossil fuels, according to a report by the NGOs Rainforest Action Network, Reclaim Finance and others.
US financial giants JP Morgan Chase, Citi and Bank of America lead the pack.
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βCiti is the second worst financier of dirty energy projects in the world from 2016 to 2023, spending a total of $396.3 billion on coal, oil and gas,β the report claims.
“Power to Stop”
“These are the people who have the power to stop… and invest in things that don’t destroy our planet,” one of the protest organizers, Renata Pumarol, told AFP.
Citi insists it is “transparent about our climate-related activities.”
“We are supporting the transition to a low-carbon economy through our net zero commitments and our $1 trillion sustainable financing goal,” Citi said.
Last year was the hottest on record globally, with several new temperature records set in July alone this year.
In a letter to the bank’s leaders, more than 750 scientists warned Citi that “climate impacts will be much worse unless we make deep, rapid cuts in heat-trapping emissions, phase out fossil fuels and pursue a fair transition to a clean energy system”.
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Extreme heat events such as drought, forest fires and floods have hit almost every corner of the globe, wreaking havoc on healthcare, infrastructure and ecosystems.
The UN has called the heat a “new epidemic”, warning that new oil and gas licenses are signing the future of the planet.
Financing is one of the key elements underpinning clean energy along with government permits and insurance to guarantee the projects.
“Without any of those pieces, it can’t go forward. And that’s why we’re going after funders,” said activist Laurel Sutherlin.
Protester Laura Esther Wolfson said the fight against fossil fuel funding would not be “a one-day fight”.
“The fight for civil rights took years, what we can’t do is sit back and do nothing,” he said.
Source: AFP