Bankers’ backlash
The backlash against climate action continues as UBS1 follows other banks in quitting the UN-sponsored Net-Zero Banking Alliance (NZBA)2.
The NZBA recognises that banks can play a major role in enabling the transition to a net-zero emissions economy by providing financing solutions. The banks in the Alliance are following the goals of the Paris Agreement, the legally binding international treaty on climate change adopted by 195 countries at the UN Climate Change Conference (COP21) in 2015.
Here’s what the UN has to say about the NZBA it convened:
By supporting businesses and people to cut waste and pollution, to invest in new technologies that drive growth and long-term savings, and to protect their homes and businesses, member banks are taking a responsible and ambitious approach to climate, one of their biggest sources of risk and opportunity.
Those quitting the NZBA are judged to be responding to pressure from fossil-fuel funded politicians. Earlier this year, as wildfires swept across Los Angeles, Brad Lander, New York City's independently elected chief financial officer, commented on the withdrawal of two US banks3:
BlackRock and JPMorgan are fiddling while Los Angeles burns. Their shortsighted, weak-kneed decisions to exit the Net Zero Asset Managers Initiative and Net-Zero Banking Alliance deny the reality – which their leaders know well, and which is tragically right before our eyes – that climate risk is financial risk. The devastating Los Angeles wildfires are just the latest overwhelming evidence that climate change is wreaking havoc on our planet, our portfolios, and the economy.
BlackRock and JPMorgan join peers in a stark betrayal of the responsibility that they have in addressing the climate crisis. By absconding from their responsibilities to combat climate change, these financial institutions are yielding to the authoritarian tone set by the incoming Trump Administration. They are, in essence, becoming science and financial reality deniers.
Many West Northamptonshire residents would echo the view that wildfires are just the latest overwhelming evidence that climate change is wreaking havoc on our planet, our portfolios, and the economy, and that decisions taken by our new Councillors mean they too are, in essence, science and financial reality deniers.
REFERENCES
1 UBS withdraws from the Net-Zero Banking Alliance