Why Big Banks Are Accused Of Funding The Climate Crisis

To save the world, we must follow the money, climate campaigners say.

Rachel Heaton understands better than most the power banks have to shape our world. Heaton, a member of the Muckleshoot tribe, started to make the connection between money and climate change as an activist against the oil pipeline at Standing Rock, North Dakota.

She was one of a group of activists who identified Wells Fargo as the principal bank investing in the controversial pipeline that passes under the Missouri River, the source of the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe’s water supply. Their 2016 campaign, organizing pickets outside dozens of the bank’s branches in their home city of Seattle, ultimately persuaded the city to close its account with Wells Fargo in February 2017. (Although Seattle did eventually go back to the bank, for lack of other options.)

Following this campaign, Heaton co-founded Mazaska Talks — mazaska is the Lakota word for “money” — in January 2017, an indigenous-led alliance aiming to bring people together across the country to demand cities pull their money away from the Wall Street banks that finance fossil fuels.

“What we’re pushing to get back to are those values of respecting Mother Earth, and understanding that if we allow these banks and these fossil fuel companies to continue exploring and taking these resources, we are no longer going to have a Mother Earth,” Heaton said.

Read this very educational article by Adam Weymouth at HuffPost US

 

One response to “Why Big Banks Are Accused Of Funding The Climate Crisis”

  1. Sasa says:

    There was a comment to this article by Steven Hurdle it makes this information complete:
    This article raises some interesting points, but it’s based upon a false premise: that fossil fuels are the heart of the climate crisis. The United Nations, for one, disagrees. When you look at the the greenhouse gases directly created by farm animals, and consider that the majority of deforestation is done in support of animal ag., and the fact that the majority of human-caused carbon de-sequestration is because of activities related to animal agriculture, it vaults animal agriculture clearly into top place overall. And animal agriculture is also a leading cause of groundwater contamination and depletion, a leading cause of ocean dead zones, a leading cause of species extinction, a leading cause of antibiotic resistant bacteria, and more. Add it all together, and there’s no denying that animal agriculture is the #1 existential threat to the future of this planet’s environment. So this article raises some interesting points, but it begs the question by falsely presuming that fossil fuels should be the target of these tactics.

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