Chase: Stop greenwashing your climate crimes
Activists demonstrate at Chase bank branch in downtown Chicago
CHICAGO, Ill. – On Black Friday, a day that historically celebrates consumer power, local climate activists converged on the 150 N. Michigan Ave. branch of Chase Bank to protest J.P.Morgan Chase’s greenwashing of their investments of hundreds of billions of dollars into dangerous new fossil fuel projects that are destroying our planet.
Since the Paris Climate Agreement was signed by nearly every nation on Earth, Chase, the nation’s largest bank, has invested $382 billion in fossil fuels, which was one-third more than the second worst fossil fuel bank, according to Banking on Climate Chaos.
In recent years, the powerful bank has made attempts to greenwash its dirty record on fossil fuels via deceptive sustainability commitments. These distracting commitments – such as “mobilizing private capital toward sustainable development” and “building sustainability into our new headquarters” – co-opt the language of the climate justice movement while ignoring the actual demands of the people. The people are demanding #NoMoreFossilFuels!
Meanwhile, Chase has continued to provide banking services to corporations involved in the fossil fuel industry and deforestation. In 2021, Chase provided $61.3 billion in fossil fuel financing – a whopping $10 billion more than the previous year in 2020.
On Friday, Nov. 25, climate activists met together to deliver a letter to the bank branch manager, as well as demonstrate outside the branch regarding Chase’s deceptive greenwashing practices.
“Chase thinks it can distract the public from its appalling record of fossil fuel investment with hand-wavey ‘sustainability initiatives’ that do nothing to address the root causes of climate change. But we’re not falling for it! We’re demanding nothing short of complete divestment of fossil fuels, the symptoms of which are already devastating communities across the Global South,” said J. Colin Crowley of Rising Tide Chicago.
To comply with the goals set out by the Paris Agreement, we need to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in half by 2030, and to zero by 2050, and we need to act fast. The actions of J.P.Morgan Chase, left unchallenged, will lead to increased emissions and continued climate collapse.
The few people in charge at J.P.Morgan Chase have no right, as the capitalist and profit driven entity that it is, to repeatedly defy the laws of nature and reap profits from striking contracts with planet killing industries while the rest of the world’s population toils and dies under extreme weather caused by their investments. J.P.Morgan Chase has already shown maximal unwillingness to divest from fossil fuels, and we do not believe they ever will act in accordance with the will of the people to divest fully. Since their pattern of funding planet killing projects continues, and likely will with no end in sight, it is well past time they completely stop operating as a business and close their doors for good.
The choice is becoming clearer with each climate catastrophe, we must choose to have economies that uplift each other, instead of choosing to keep the big banks like Chase Bank open and operating with ill intent towards the future of humanity’s survival.
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