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Banks’ financing of coal, oil, and gas was higher in 2021 than it was in 2016, the year after the Paris agreement was adopted

August 2022

Around the world, we’re witnessing the impacts of global heating: in the past week, airport runways have melted in the UK, wildfires have torched huge swathes of Europe, and more than 100 million Americans have sweltered in dangerously high temperatures. Already this year, prolonged heatwaves and drought in many of the world’s breadbaskets have exacerbated a global food shortage that has raised the number of people living with food insecurity from 440 million to 1.6 billion.

There are many to blame for the climate crisis and its extreme weather impacts. Executives of fossil fuel companies bear the greatest responsibility. More than anything else, it has been their great deceit – their burying of climate science, funding of climate denial, and spending of billions to kill climate policy – that has prevented us from transitioning away from an economy powered by coal, oil and gas. Compromised politicians, including the entire Republican party and the Democratic coal baron Joe Manchin, deserve special condemnation, too.

In the cast of climate villains, however, another character rises to claim a special place on center stage: Wall Street.

On 12 December 2015, virtually every nation on earth adopted the Paris agreement. “Today, the American people can be proud – because this historic agreement is a tribute to American leadership,” enthused President Obama. But there were problems from the beginning. The most obvious was that the agreement was voluntary; it lacked a legally binding commitment to reduce emissions. Another major problem was that no one on Wall Street was paying attention.

Since the Paris Agreement, the six largest US banks – Chase, Citi, Wells Fargo, Bank of America, Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs – have provided $1.4tn in financing to the fossil fuel industry. Indeed, since that heralded day in the French capital, the world’s four largest funders of fossil fuel expansion have all been US banks. So much for “American leadership”.

Read more in The Guardian

• https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/jul/27/looking-for-someone-to-blame-for-the-extreme-heat-try-wall-street

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Environmental full-cost accounting

Confronting Externalities

Measuring Full Costs: Dealing with Damage to 'The Commons'

Short-term profit taking ..... long-term externality (coming due) costs adding up

Today (July 30), oil giants ExxonMobil and Chevron reported historic profits from the last three months. Exxon made $17.9 billion (not a typo) last quarter, up 273% from the same time last year, while Chevron made $11.6 billion. Exxon’s rate of income was $2,245.62 every second of every day for the past 92 days; Chevron made $1,462.11 per second.

Together, BP, Chevron, ExxonMobil, Shell, and TotalEnergies are expected to announce $60 billion in profits for the past three months. They plan to spend much of the profit not on reinvesting in their businesses, but on stock buybacks, which drives up the price of the stock. (HCR)

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