Big Banks Pick Inopportune Moment to Ditch Climate Commitments

[Passages]

As Los Angeles burns, the biggest banks have disclaimed membership in the Net-Zero Banking Alliance. Mother Nature won’t take pity on them.

by David Dayen January 10, 2025

The torching of Los Angeles is not over, but it has already put a damper on Wall Street’s efforts to cozy up to the incoming Trump administration. Over the past couple of weeks, all six of America’s biggest banks have rolled back promises to use their power as financial intermediaries to protect the planet. The reason why is really simple: Donald Trump and the conservative movement, fueled by cash from the fossil fuel industry, are taking power. They want big banks to get in line with their profit-maximizing, planet-burning aims. And the banks are eagerly complying.

But the banks didn’t count on wildfires in a major American city splashed across television screens right in the middle of their surrender moment. “It is a tragic irony that banks are walking back from their climate commitments just when climate risks are happening before our eyes,” said Graham Steele, the former assistant secretary for financial institutions at the Treasury Department under Joe Biden.

Specifically, JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America, Citigroup, Wells Fargo, Morgan Stanley, and Goldman Sachs have all dropped out of a group initiated in 2021, in conjunction with the United Nations, called the Net-Zero Banking Alliance. The commitment statement outlining principles for responsible banking says that members will transition their investments and lending targets to “align with pathways to net-zero” emissions by 2050, with the intention of holding the rise in global temperatures at or below 1.5 degrees Celsius.

The 141 member banks in the alliance, which come from 44 countries, hold $61 trillion in financial assets in their portfolios. And they weren’t making these commitments out of a general goodwill to save the planet, nice as that may be. The impact of a warming climate, including the out-of-control catastrophe we’re seeing in Los Angeles right now, is a major threat to financial safety and soundness. Global economic losses from climate change will reach into the trillions, and among the first in line to eat those losses are banks and other financiers.

https://prospect.org/economy/2025-01-10-big-banks-inopportune-moment-ditch-climate-commitments/

Greed should be classified as a disease.

[Attilatheblond]

1. Fat cats/Banks seem to have adopted 'eat, drink, be merry...

because we're all gonna die anyway, so screw posterity.'

[Think. Again.]

2. Yes, the planet burning up and dying is definitely "innopportune".