350 Wenatchee Climate Conversations NCW

The Glasgow Climate Talks begin today. What the world’s governments agree to over the next twelve days is incredibly important ― it is not hyperbole to say that the fate of humanity is on the line.

But it isn’t only governments that are responsible for the climate crisis. That’s why three months ago we launched the Deadline Glasgow: Defund Climate Chaoscampaign, setting the start of COP26 as a deadline for US financial institutions to pass new climate policies. With the talks starting today, we wanted to share what we have achieved so far:

Collectively, over the past three months we have

• Delivered 154,000 petition signatures to branch offices around the country
• Swamped bank executives with hundreds of thousands of emails, demanding that they phase out fossil fuel financing
• Made more than 3,000 phone calls to CEOs offices
• Organized nearly 8,000 customers to join the Customers for Climate Justice campaign
• Supported nearly 200 in-person actions at bank branches, insurance offices and asset manager headquarters

On Friday, hundreds of youth-led activists around the world called out financial institutions for their role in the climate crisis and enabling Indigenous rights abuses. In San Francisco, community groups painted a block-long mural outside of BlackRock’s headquarters. In Seattle, hundreds enacted a die-in outside of Chase’s regional HQ. On the anniversary of Hurricane Sandy, New Yorkers marched on the Federal Reserve and Citibank’s global headquarters.

In addition to bringing attention to the failure of financial institutions to take action to stem their financing of fossil fuels, the youth-led day of action also brought attention to the continued violation of Indigenous rights enabled by the “net zero” framework. Net Zero opens the door to false solutions like carbon offsets and Indigenous rights violations.

Click here to spread the word that the current Net Zero proposals leave the door open for fossil fuel expansion.

To every one of you who has participated in the Deadline Glasgow campaign ― whether you made a phone call, sent an email or took to the streets to make our demands heard ― we wanted to take a moment to express our deep gratitude.

Thanks to all of you, the message to banks, insurance companies and asset managers could hardly have been clearer. Yet, unfortunately we are sorry to report that US financial institutions have failed to rise to the moment.

We have had some wins over the last three months but only time will tell if they are more than symbolic. AXIS Capital became the first North American insurance company to commit to phasing out coverage for all coal businesses. After hundreds of you swamped its phone lines, Chubb publicly committed to stop insuring tar sands extraction (though we are still waiting on an official policy). Most recently, Chase, Wells Fargo and Goldman Sachs joined the Net Zero Banking Alliance (which still has loopholes as we covered in a recent blog post).

Click here to tell the founder of the Net Zero Banking Alliance, Mark Carney, and UN Special Climate Envoy John Kerry, that net zero requires Wall Street to abandon fossil fuels.

These are important steps and without pressure from all of you, they never would have happened. But, we have to be real, we are deeply disappointed that we didn’t see more progress ahead of Glasgow.

There is still a chance that we’ll see some new policies from US financial institutions during the talks, but whatever happens in Glasgow over the next two weeks, one thing is already crystal clear: In the years ahead, we are going to need a movement more powerful than ever to hold Wall Street accountable for its torching of the planet.

Over the next two weeks, we will be sending regular digests for you with all the latest from Glasgow, including plenty of updates about all the actions our partners are hosting. Keep an eye out for those updates.

Thanks for all you’ve done,
~ the Stop the Money Pipeline team

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