ACTION PLAYBOOK:
End Fossil Fuel Financing
Let’s take action.
-
Get banks to align their financing decisions with their climate pledges.
-
Choose a financial institution to contact
Craft and send your message
Tag them on social media to amplify
Ask a friend to do it too
Step 1. Choose a financial institution to contact
The Glasgow Alliance for Net Zero, formed in 2021 ahead of COP26, has over 550 member organizations that represent over $150 trillion in assets.
Prioritize contacting your own banks, credit card providers, or asset managers from the list of members. Below, you’ll find contact information for some of the relevant executives at these institutions. If your bank isn’t listed but you suspect they’re financing high-emissions projects, contact your own bank instead. You can also contact your asset management firm if you see them on this list (we’ve included contact info for Vanguard, the world’s largest investor in coal, below).
If you’re stuck between two of your banks and only have time to contact one, you can use the Banking on Climate Chaos scorecard to help you prioritize.
-
-
-
-
-
Found additional contacts at these or other institutions? Share them with us at info@climatechangemakers.org!
Step 2. Send an email or direct message on LinkedIn/Twitter
Send a message urging the bank to stop financing high-emissions projects. Use your leverage as a customer and appeal to the sense of cognitive dissonance between a bank’s stated climate goals and its actions.
Include a brief personal climate “why” to help build a connection with the person. If you’ve never written a sentence or two about your own relationship to the climate crisis, try checking out our Write Your Climate “Why” playbook.
Here’s a suggested framework for your email:
Identify yourself as a customer/client.
State your ask early on: I’d like for your company to release a rigorous plan to stop financing new oil, gas, and coal projects to minimize the serious financial risks associated with climate change.
➡️ Here’s where you can insert a sentence with your own personal climate narrative.
Describe how climate risk is investment risk, and the writing is on the wall. We’re not asking them to act out of pure moral obligation; we’re asking them to uphold their fiduciary responsibility. Borrow generously from the learn more section below and Larry Fink’s 2022 letter to CEOs.
Point out the hypocrisy, highlighting the disconnect between membership in the Glasgow Alliance for Net Zero and the banks’ continued fossil fuel financing.
Close with something vaguely ominous, like “I don’t take your decision to finance fossil fuels lightly, and I will soon take my business to more sustainable institutions if I don’t see your financing align with your climate commitments.” Make them sweat, but always keep it cordial.
Don’t neglect the subject line, which is critical for catching their eye. Use a punchy statement.
Optional: When you send your email, bcc info@climatechangemakers.org so we can track our impact!
Step 3. Amplify on socials
Write a condensed version of your message and post it on social media. Opening multiple channels of communication will increase your chances of a response, so tag them publicly in addition to sending them a direct message. If you can’t find their personal handle, tag the company or department.
To maximize your impact, share what you did with your own network. Posting on Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, etc. about your experience taking this action can help inspire others to start their own climate advocacy journey.
Step 4. Ask a friend to do it too
Network effects are powerful. Persuading friends and family to take climate action is a crucial step toward changing cultural norms and making real progress. Now that you’ve taken this action, send a note to a friend along with this playbook asking them to take this action. Simplify the process for them by forwarding your own email or DM as a model.
Thank you for taking action!
Help us improve this playbook: info@climatechangemakers.org
Want to learn more about the problem?
The world’s largest banks still have a heavy hand in financing fossil fuel projects, including banks that have set net-zero goals and publicly pledged to restrict fossil fuel financing. Between 2015 and 2020, the world’s 60 biggest banks spent $3.8 trillion on financing fossil fuel projects. And while a number of financial institutions are increasingly making climate-conscious investments, a countermovement against ESG has been gaining traction, calling it “woke capitalism." ESG investing incorporates environmental, social, and governance factors into its assessment of financial risk. Particularly alarming is the support this countermovement has garnered from U.S. elected officials, resulting in proposed and enacted pro-fossil fuel “boycott bills” that boycott financial institutions with climate-friendly investment strategies. A growing number of state legislatures are targeting BlackRock, the world’s largest asset manager, for its “climate agenda” by threatening to divest their states’ pension funds from BlackRock assets. And if the House majority changes hands, we can expect to see this phenomenon at the federal level, too.
But the anti-ESG movement is largely a disinformation campaign. Its proponents claim that climate-smart investing is purely ideological, and that participating institutions are engaging in a war on capitalism. In reality, these decisions are driven by capitalism, as BlackRock CEO Larry Fink argues in his annual letter to other financial services CEOs; climate risk is investment risk. Most financial experts agree that a gradual withdrawal from oil, gas, and coal assets is better for an investor’s long-term bottom line.
So what does the anti-ESG movement have to do with COP27?
Beyond creating a confusing patchwork of legislation to navigate, the anti-ESG political movement is having a chilling effect on progress toward ending fossil fuel financing. In 2021, ahead of COP26 in Glasgow, over 550 financial institutions formed the Glasgow Financial Alliance for Net Zero (GFANZ). In the year following, the group has released promising standards and frameworks for decarbonizing portfolios. However, financing for fossil fuel projects has been a major sticking point. After GFANZ’s UN partner set a requirement that signatories end their fossil fuel financing, JPMorgan Chase, Morgan Stanley, and Bank of America faced pressure from the anti-ESG movement to pull out of GFANZ.
In October of 2022, GFANZ announced it will drop the requirement to end fossil financing, citing antitrust concerns from its U.S. members. Now, the world’s largest net-zero financial alliance is no longer pressuring its members to redirect their financing. That’s where we come in.
