Jeanne —
As tens of thousands of Americans grieve loved ones lost to Covid-19, the fossil fuel industry is busy exploiting this moment for maximum profit: TC Energy is flying workers in to build the Keystone XL pipeline, and work is continuing on the Coastal GasLink pipeline despite demands that it must stop to prevent Covid-19 ravaging rural communities with few hospitals.
As ever, Wall Street banks are the fossil fuel industry’s enablers: Last week, JPMorgan Chase announced that it was lending $1.25 billion to TC Energy. When you look at Chase’s Board of Directors, this is no surprise.
You may never have heard of Lee Raymond, but in the ranks of climate villains he’s almost peerless. Raymond was Chair and CEO of ExxonMobil from 1993 – 2005. During that time, he was the lead architect of ExxonMobil’s efforts to deny the reality of the climate crisis: funding a vast web of climate denial think tanks, pressuring the Bush Administration to abandon the Kyoto Protocol, and spending millions lobbying against climate policy.
Raymond has also spent the last three decades as one of the most influential voices on JPMorgan Chase’s Board of Directors.
During his time at Chase, the bank positioned itself as the world’s largest funder of the fossil fuel industry. Since the Paris Agreement was signed, Chase has loaned over $296 billion to the fossil fuel industry— more than any other bank by a whopping 36% margin. This is what happens when you have a climate denier at the helm of your Board of Directors. But now there is something we can do about it.
Next month, Chase shareholders will vote on whether to re-nominate perhaps the world’s most influential climate denier, Lee Raymond, to JPMorgan Chase’s Board.
Just three companies will have an outsize impact whether Lee Raymond is renominated to Chase’s Board. Collectively, asset managers BlackRock, Vanguard, and State Street own almost 20% of Chase’s stock—and BlackRock owns most of all.
We know these giant money managers are listening. Earlier this year, Larry Fink, the CEO of BlackRock — a company with over $7.4 trillion on its books — publicly declared that it was going to to start prioritizing climate action in all of its business. Now it’s time for BlackRock and its peers to walk their talk.
Can you ask BlackRock to vote to remove Lee Raymond from Chase’s board?
Even in these strange times, there are still things we can and must do about the climate crisis— making our voices heard to ensure that a climate denier doesn’t reign over the world’s most influential bank for another four years is an excellent place to start.
In solidarity,
Alec
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