How Your Bank Is Funding Climate Change
How Your Bank Is Funding Climate Change
By Kara
Did you know that just four US banks are responsible for one quarter of fossil fuel financing over the last six years?
I think we can all agree that being you know instigators of global climate collapse is not a good look for any of these banks. But it’s also not a good look for any of us who might be using these banks. Now, you may be thinking, look, I don’t spend my weekends fracking for oil in the Gulf of Mexico. I’m not up there trying to drill in the Arctic reserve, like, how did I get drawn into this fossil fuel mess? Well, it’s a little thing called fractional reserve banking.
What is fractional reserve banking?
Fractional reserve banking allows banks to lend out up to 90% of the money that you put into that bank to anyone they damn well, please, and they’re doing this so they can make some money off of it. Banks are, to quote the iconic group TLC, creepin, and trying to keep it on the down low. Banks go around sneaking behind our back to lend out money to these fossil fuel companies, all while knowing that these companies are destroying life on Earth, like the banks know that. And to our faces, these banks are pushing out sustainable campaign after sustainable campaign to try and appeal to us as consumers.
This is known as financial greenwashing. And literally every major bank is doing it. Why are banks doing us so dirty? Well, turns out banks don’t make that much money off of the money that we as consumers put into the bank. They make their money by lending out your money and some of their money, things like mortgages, car loans, personal loans, that’s the bank lending out money to a variety of people in places, and then they make money on the interest that they get from those loans.
But banks also invest billions of dollars into other companies, businesses like Chevron, or Exxon or Occidental Petroleum Corp, all three of which Chase Bank has given a ton of money to in the last few years. In fact, between 2016 and 2020, Chase Bank, Citibank, Wells Fargo and Bank of America funneled more than $412 billion to expanding fossil fuel extraction and use banks are talking out of both sides of their mouth to us. And honestly, I’m over it.
How your bank is funding climate change
Can we avoid climate catastrophe?
The IEA is the gold standard of climate science. And in 2021, they released a report called Net Zero by 2050. And this is basically a roadmap to avoiding total climate catastrophe. The report said, and I’m paraphrasing here, “Hey, world, listen up.
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