Stop The Money Pipeline Launch Webinar
The Stop the Money Pipeline coalition held a launch webinar on February 9th for a National Day of Action during the 3 days of deep strikes and actions during Earth Week in April of 2020. Our goal is to stop the funding of climate destruction. That means banks, insurance companies, and investors need to stop funding fossil fuels and deforestation and start respecting human rights and Indigenous sovereignty. Our panelists will talk about how fossil fuel finance affects frontline communities, the basics of the divestment campaigns for each of the targets and why this is so important to climate justice and how you can take action in your local community for the biggest finance campaign of 2020. Learn more at StopTheMoneyPipeline.com
Background:
On Friday, January 10, a coalition of over a dozen groups launched a major new mobilization, Stop the Money Pipeline, targeting the financial sector’s funding of climate chaos. Stop the Money Pipeline targets Big Banks, Big Investors, and Big Insurance. The top three targets are Chase Bank (largest funder of fossil fuels); Black Rock ($7 Trillion asset manager with over $88 billion in fossil fuels); and Liberty Mutual Insurance.
Like other corporations, JPMorgan Chase, Blackrock, Liberty Mutual and other Wall Street financial institutions are sensitive to public opinion. They have brands to protect, and customers to retain. When we unveil their complicity in the destruction of our climate, we threaten their cherished profits, and ability to attract customers. And, the more we are able to do this, the more we are able to increase the reputational risk -- and thus financial risk -- that the finance sector takes on in financing new fossil fuel projects. If we can stop the flow of money, we can stop the flow of oil.
Get Involved!
- Sign up at stopthemoneypipeline.com
- Register your action starting February 17th, 2020.
- Email questions to info@stopthemoneypipeline.com
Panelists:
- Bill McKibben, Founder - 350.org
- Sulakshana, Energy Finance Campaigner - Rainforest Action Network
- Nadia Vitek, Student Organizer with Cornell Climate Justice, Divest Ed
- Tara Houska, Founder - Gin’ew Collective
- Tamara Toles O'Laughlin, North America Director - 350.org
- Moira Birss, Climate & Finance Director - Amazon Watch
- Jason Opeña Disterhoft, Climate and Energy Senior Campaigner - Rainforest Action Network
- Liz Butler - Vice President Organizing and Strategic Alliances Friends of the Earth
This webinar has already passed, but you can watch the video recording!
In the news: "Why Big Banks Are Accused Of Funding The Climate Crisis"
Originally published at Huffington Post
October 2, 2019 by Adam Weymouth
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.
Excerpt:
Universities have often been at the forefront of pushing for social change. They’ve led divestment campaigns against tobacco and apartheid in the past. As long-term investors with a social mission, they are obvious institutions to take up the current divestment movement, said Alyssa Lee, the director of campus programs at Divest Ed, an organization supporting over 75 U.S. college divestment campaigns.
Now, the divestment campaign has moved far beyond college campuses. Climate strikes took place around the world last month, involving more than 6 million people across 185 countries, demanding the end of fossil fuels and a move to renewable energy. Lee sees that the role of divestment as key. “If you want to see the climate strike demands being met, one of the necessary steps is to call out the role of the financing and the investment in the fossil fuel industry,” said Lee.