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Divestment

Divest From Banks That Fuel Climate Change, Establish Public Bank

New York, NY – As global leaders assemble for the 4th Annual Climate Finance Day, New Yorkers, including representatives from environmental, community and student groups, held a rally at City Hall on November 28, 2018 and call on NYC to divest public money from banks that fuel climate change and to establish a municipal public bank to help fund the transition to a just, sustainable economy. At the rally, Public Bank NYC, a broad-based coalition of community, worker rights, environmental, and economic justice groups, will release new findings showing nine of the largest banks eligible to hold City deposits (“NYC designated banks”) are major investors in the fossil fuel industry, including the proposed Williams Pipeline, which would carry fracked gas across the New York Harbor.

The Global Fossil Fuel Divestment And Clean Energy Investment Movement

Since its launch by students as a moral call to climate action in 2011, the fossil fuel divestment campaign has become a mainstream financial movement mobilizing trillions of dollars in support of the clean energy transition. Commitments to divest continue to grow rapidly: Today, nearly 1,000 institutional investors with $6.24 trillion in assets have committed to divest from fossil fuels, up from $52 billion four years ago—an increase of 11,900 percent. The primary drivers of this recent growth are insurers, pension funds, and sovereign wealth funds. The insurance sector continues to divest more than any other sector, having committed to divest over $3 trillion in assets.

At Rally Outside Jamie Dimon’s Home, Immigrant Rights Advocates Demand #BackersOfHate Stop Bankrolling For-Profit Prisons

"Private detention companies like CoreCivic and the Geo Group continue to be financed by Corporate #BackersofHate like JPMorgan Chase and Wells Fargo, who profit enormously from our communities' pain and the separation of families," read the event's Facebook page. JPMorgan Chase has loaned tens of millions of dollars to CoreCivic, as well as underwriting numerous multi-million dollar corporate bonds for the company. The bank also has at least $72 million invested in the Geo Group. Both for-profit prisons have government contracts under which they run immigrant detention facilities that have filled up in recent weeks with parents and children who have been forcibly separated under President Donald Trump's "zero tolerance" immigration policy.

Are Fossil Fuel Divestment Campaigns Working?

Is fossil fuels divestment an effective strategy in tackling climate change? A newly released study by the Political Economy Research Institute (PERI) at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst suggests that this strategy is not sufficient on its own in affecting the global battle against climate change and that new approaches are needed. Robert Pollin, a distinguished professor of economics at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, co-director of PERI and co-author of the study spoke to C.J. Polychroniou about the limits of the movement to divest from fossil fuels and the need for fresh approaches and a more holistic type of action for combatting climate change.

Why Public Banking Is The End Goal Of The Divestment Movement

Something big is starting to happen in the world of activism. Grassroots campaigns are beginning to coalesce into coherent, focused missions with definable outcomes. The Divest campaign is a classic example of how the People can have a tangible effect on society by speaking the language of the dominating classes: money. Divestment is what it sounds like: removing public investments from corporate institutions, and repurposing them into organizations which will benefit the common good. This means leveraging the collective will through mass individual actions to force the perpetrators of corrupt and unscrupulous behavior to directly lose profits; in essence, to divest is to boycott. Even in the world of international affairs, we hear of sanctions, which are nothing more than state actors divesting from another nation in order to conduct economic war.

How Activists Won Divestment from Fossil Fuels in New York City

After five years of tireless organizing, the movement to divest NYC public worker pension funds from fossil fuels scored a win.  On January 10, Mayor Bill de Blasio announced that New York City will divest the $5 billion of its pension funds presently invested in fossil fuel stocks. It will also sue the top five fossil fuel corporations—ExxonMobil, Shell, BP, Chevron, ConocoPhillips—charging that because they hid the evidence that burning fossil fuels causes climate change, they are responsible for the billions of dollars the city has spent on climate remediation.   The divestment campaign provides an excellent example of how dedicated organizing, clear demands and strategies, creative tactics, strong coalitions and good luck can come together for a win.  

As Congress Feeds The Merchants Of Death, The People Must Divest

In recent budget negotiations, Senate Democrats agreed to a boost in military spending that exceeded the cap for fiscal 2018 by $70 billion, bringing the total request to an enormous $716 billion. Inevitably, this means more Pentagon contracts will be awarded to private corporations that use endless war to line their pockets. Democrats capitulated to this massive increase without so much as a scuffle. But the move hardly comes as a surprise, given how much money flows from weapons makers to the coffers of congressional campaigns for both parties.  

New York City Sues Oil Companies Over Climate Change

New York City is suing five of the largest oil companies over the billions of dollars it spends protecting the city from the effects of climate change, and it plans to divest its pension funds' $5 billion in assets involving fossil fuel producers, Mayor Bill de Blasio announced Wednesday. As head of the nation's largest city, de Blasio is throwing significant weight behind a movement by local governments to directly target fossil fuel companies for the role their products play in fueling global warming. "They are the first ones responsible for this crisis, and they should not get away with it anymore," de Blasio said at a news conference held in a building that flooded when Hurricane Sandy hit the city in 2012. "It's time for them to start paying for the damage they've done."

Declaration On Climate Finance

We the undersigned, call for an immediate end to investments in new fossil fuel production and infrastructure, and encourage a dramatic increase in investments in renewable energy. We are issuing this call to action in the lead up to the climate summit hosted by President Macron in Paris this December. President Macron and other world leaders, have already spoken out about the need for an increase in finance for climate solutions, but they have remained largely silent about the other, dirtier side of the equation: the ongoing finance of new coal, oil and gas production and infrastructure. Ongoing global climate change and environmental destructions are happening at an unprecedented scale, and it will take unprecedented actions to limit the worst consequences of our dependence on oil, coal, and gas. Equally as critical as drastically curbing the carbon intensity of our economic systems is the need for immediate and ambitious actions to stop exploration and expansion of fossil fuel projects and manage the decline of existing production in line with what is necessary to achieve the Paris climate goals.

BlackRock Wields Its $6 Trillion Club To Combat Climate Risks

BlackRock, along with investors such as UBS Asset Management and JPMorgan Chase & Co., is a participant in the task force led by Bloomberg LP founder Michael Bloomberg. The group concluded in June that companies affected by climate change should conduct scenario analyses and include those results in their financial reports. BlackRock sees this framework as “a means to achieve the comparability and consistency of reporting that is important to us as investors,” it said in the letter. The move is the latest by BlackRock on climate change after casting its first votes this year in favor of shareholder proposals asking companies such as Occidental Petroleum Corp. and Exxon Mobil Corp. to provide more detail on the topic. Chief Executive Officer Larry Fink said in his annual letter to CEOs earlier this year that the New York-based firm would not be “infinitely patient” with companies on environmental and social issues that carry long-term risks.

Divest Black Friday

By Staff of Mazaska Talks - Keystone I just leaked 210,000 gallons of oil on the Sisseton Wahpeton Reservation; Nebraska just approved Keystone XL; First Nations in British Columbia are building tiny houses in the pathway of Trans Mountain; and Enbridge has loaded the state of Minnesota with pipe, even though Minnesota hasn’t approved Line 3 yet. Hundreds of indigenous people have formed camps and occupations of spaces in the paths of these pipelines, with dozens of arrests already. Treaties are remarked as Supreme law of the land in Article 6 of the U.S. Constitution, yet law enforcement is protecting and serving oil corporations instead of the constitution. Wall Street clearly hasn’t learned their lesson from the #NoDAPL movement, as they continue to finance these repressive corporations. So, we’re getting together this Takesgiving to remind them...

Wells Fargo Blockaded, Demanding Divestment From Tar Sands

By Alex Cohen, for Earth Defense Coalition. On November 14, 2017, five water protectors took action in solidarity with front line Indigenous resistance efforts at Camp Makwa to stop the construction of the Enbridge Line 3 tar sands pipeline in Minnesota. The activists locked down to each other and used their bodies to disrupt business as usual at Wells Fargo, one of the major financial players behind this genocidal, extractive fossil fuel project. Wells Fargo has 743 million invested into Enbridge who is responsible for Tar Sands and the Line 3 pipeline threatening and ravaging through Indigenous lands, water, wild rice, and sovereignty in Minnesota. This action is one of hundreds taking place across the globe to call for divestment from financial institutions invested in the destructive fossil fuel industry.

Divest From The War Machine

By Annie Windholz for Medium - Jodie Evans spoke about how war has become normalized to millennials- an entire generation that has only known war. She commented that under Obama the anti-war movement was a silenced movement, but is becoming alive again during trump, with 65% of tax dollars going to war and the military. Evans was excited about the divest campaign because the anti-war movement had not yet had such a long term plan for ending war. Her question for the audience was, how do we make the movement relational? The Divest from War campaign organizer, Haley Pedersen, took the floor explaining that 23 cents of every tax dollar goes into military contractors’ pockets, with top producer Lockheed Martin’s CEO making $19 million in 2016. During this same year 150,000 people died in violent conflicts around the world as a direct result of these weapons with 90% of those killed in wars being mostly women and children civilians, and an additional 65 million people displaced because of war. Military contractors make endless profits at the expense of endless suffering with their CEOs routinely making the top paid CEOs list. Pederson said CODEPINK is currently working with different partners in divestment.

Native American Women Going After Europe’s Banks To Divest From Oil

By Shannan Stoll for The Nation - Last December, calls to defund the Dakota Access pipeline and “Stand with Standing Rock” led individuals to divest millions of dollars from banks extending credit to that project. As cities and tribes got involved, that amount increased to now more than $4 billion. Seattle was the first, then more cities followed, and the movement to defund Big Oil is still growing. In May, Indigenous leaders launched a new campaign, the Treaty Alliance Against Tar Sands Expansion, targeting four proposed tar sands pipelines. The strategy is to stop banks’ financial commitment before ground is broken. One of these projects – TransCanada’s Energy East Pipeline – was terminated earlier this month. Now, the movement that began at Standing Rock has gone global, since much of the DAPL funding came from overseas banks. Some European banks such as BNP Paribas have taken steps to stop funding fossil fuel projects that trample Native peoples’ rights. Others such as Norway’s DNB and ING have done some divesting. Last week, a delegation of Indigenous women returned from a trip to Europe where they met with leaders of financial institutions in Norway, Switzerland, and Germany, the “home bases for several of the world’s largest financial and insurance institutions supporting dangerous extraction developments,” according to the delegation’s news release.

Santa Barbara Votes To Divest From Banks Funding Dakota Access Pipeline

By Grace Feldmann and Emiliano Campobello for Last Real Indians - SANTA BARBARA, California / village of Syuxtun—9/19/17, Santa Barbara City Council voted to proceed toward divesting over $40 million from banks funding the Dakota Access Pipeline (DAPL) starting with divestment of $6.25 million. This includes the early sale of $2.25 million in investments with Wells Fargo & Goldman Sachs. Also, a $4 million note with Union Bank is maturing and will be reinvested according to ethical investment goals, to the extent that such investments achieve “substantially equivalent safety, liquidity and yield” compared to traditional investments. These decisions come after a year of public pressure by the Santa Barbara Standing Rock Coalition (SBSRC), Chumash tribes, and allied groups. The City Council decided it is in the city’s best interest to encourage social responsibility goals rather than align with companies that disrespect indigenous treaties, commit human rights abuses, and destroy the environment. The policy specifically discourages investments in entities that “manufacture, distribute or provide financing to industries such as tobacco products, weapons, military systems, nuclear power, and fossil fuels,” and encourages companies that “support community well being through safe, environmentally sound practices, and fair labor practices.”

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