We had the first Climate Change Book Club discussion and it went a lot better than I thought it would! Everyone was excited to share about their experience reading the first half of Naomi Klein’s This Changes Everything and we had some really meaningful discussions about what steps we can take to reduce our climate change footprint as twenty-somethings living in the U.S. during the Covid-19 pandemic. Unexpectedly, that conversation turned to banking. Specifically, where banks invest our money when we’re not using it. And, SURPRISE— a lot of those investments end up going to Big Oil & Gas and other insidious industries. Shout out to Naomi Klein for once again educating me and ruining my day in the same breath. As someone who takes regular steps to live more sustainably, banking is something that had never crossed my mind when making adjustments toward living a greener lifestyle. Banking has seemed pretty harmless in my day to day life – sure the banks were bad back in like the Great Depression, but we’re living in 2020. I can deposit my paychecks online! The future is now! That was until I started learning about where my bank is investing my money. I started banking with Chase back in my first year at UCSB.There wasn’t an easy way to access my hometown credit union (this was in the time before functional mobile deposits) and there was a Chase right in the heart of IV. Later when I moved to Miami, it wasn’t a problem to keep using Chase because their banks are everywhere. Andddd that’s about the extent of all of the thought that has gone into my banking. But after our book club discussion, I realized it was high time that I did some research about what my money is actually going toward. So, this morning I decided to look into just how “bad” my bank was – Chase can’t actually be the worst, right? W R O N G! According to this report Chase invested almost 64 BILLION DOLLARS in fossil fuels in 2018 alone. What kind of environmentalist do I think I am, if I’m out here FUNDING exploration for fossil fuels in precious and fragile ecosystems? What do you mean that Chase is “bad”, Bree? JPMorgan Chase is a big investment bank. Investment banks provide a number of services to their customers including credit cards, savings accounts, mortgages, loans, and investments. But what I didn’t understand about banks until recently is that banks need to make money in addition to just holding onto it in checking and/or savings accounts. Until exploring this topic further, I had just assumed that banks made their money from the interest rates on loans and mortgages - things like that. Unfortunately, this is not the case. So the money that I paid to keep my account open has become capital for Chase to invest as it sees fit. And Chase it turns out invests BILLIONS in the fossil fuel industry. According to Statista, worldwide, global oil production was generating 95.192 million barrels of oil a day. And banks like Chase invest in “continuing production” — meaning that as we run out of “easy” to access oil reserves, money is still pouring in to explore for oil that is more difficult and environmentally costly to access. So what’s a girl who wants to save the planet to do? Going full Christopher McCandless and burning all of my money isn’t exactly an option. To divest means to deprive of power, rights, or possessions, and in this case, I decided I wanted to use my power as a consumer to take away what little capital I was holding with Chase and place it with an organization that is more in line with my beliefs. Lucky for all of us, there’s actually a few financial institutions that aren’t totally spineless that we can choose from. While poking around and looking at other banks in my region – focusing especially on ones that have similar sustainability goals with respect to our planet— I found OneUnited Bank and Bank of the West, both of which I am seriously considering investing my money into. Unfortunately with Covid cases on the rise in my county, I have to wait until I can open an account in person. In the meantime, I have decided to withdraw most of my money out of my Chase account and place it in my old Credit Union account. If you are reading this and are interested in divesting from fossil fuels and banking with a different organization than the one you are currently using, this list from Yes! Magazine has banks by region of the U.S. that do not invest in fossil fuels. Additionally, this map tool from Green America helps you find a better bank as defined by the Global Alliance for Banking on Values – so a bank with sustainable economic, social, and environmental development goals. Who would have thought! Are you going to make or have you already made the switch to a greener bank? Tell me all about it in the comments section!
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AuthorBree Gibbs, here. I'm a recent Master's Grad just trying to share what it's like to be a trash scientist (for those who aren't in the know, I'm a marine biologist). Categories
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