“The Guardian Cries A River As "Six Big US Banks Quit Net Zero Alliance Before Trump Inauguration", By Thomas J SHEPSTONE
“It started out with just a couple of big banks who probably planned to continue supporting the Big Green Grift behind the scenes but now others have headed to the exit as well.”
The Guardian Cries A River As "Six Big US Banks Quit Net Zero Alliance Before Trump Inauguration"
JAN 9
There is no major media entity more leftist than The Guardian and it is crying a river as the UN-sponsored Net Zero Banking Alliance (NZBA) shed members like a German Shephard sheds hair. It started out with just a couple of big banks who probably planned to continue supporting the Big Green Grift behind the scenes but now others have headed to the exit as well.
Here’s how Perplexity sums things up:
As of January 9, 2025, the Net-Zero Banking Alliance (NZBA) now has 141 member banks from 44 countries
This number reflects the recent departures of the six major U.S. banks:
JPMorgan Chase
Bank of America
Citigroup
Morgan Stanley
Goldman Sachs
Wells Fargo
These banks have all withdrawn from the alliance in recent weeks.
The departure of these large U.S. financial institutions marks a significant shift in the alliance's composition, leaving only three U.S.-based banks as members:
Amalgamated Bank
Climate First Bank
Areti Bank
Amazing, but the NZBA is still hanging in there, of course, according to The Guardian (emphasis added):
The six biggest banks in the US have all quit the global banking industry’s net zero target-setting group, with the imminent inauguration of Donald Trump as president expected to bring political backlash against climate action.
JP Morgan is the latest to withdraw from the UN-sponsored net zero banking alliance (NZBA), following Citigroup, Bank of America, Morgan Stanley, Wells Fargo and Goldman Sachs. All six have left since the start of December.
Analysts have said the withdrawals are an attempt to head off “anti-woke” attacks from rightwing US politicians, which are expected to escalate when Trump is sworn in as the country’s 47th president in just under a fortnight.
Trump’s vows to deregulate the energy sector, dismantle environmental rules and “drill, baby, drill”, were a big part of his campaign platform and are expected to form a key part of his blueprint for governing the US, the world’s biggest oil and gas producer.
Paddy McCully, a senior analyst at the campaign group Reclaim Finance, said: “The sudden exodus of these big US banks out of the NZBA is a lily-livered effort to avoid criticism from Trump and his climate denialist cronies.
“A few years ago, when climate change was at the front of the political agenda, the banks were keen to boast of their commitments to act on climate. Now that the political pendulum has swung in the other direction, suddenly acting on climate does not seem so important for the Wall Street lenders.”
Convened by the UN Environment Programme finance initiative but led by banks, the NZBA commits members to align their lending, investment and capital markets activities with net zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050 or earlier…
Financial institutions’ membership of net zero alliances has come under attack from politicians on the country’s right. In 2022 a potential anti-trust legal action led by attorneys general in Republican states had led some US banks to threaten to leave the NZBA, with withdrawals avoided after the group made changes to guidelines that could be construed as requirements to take action on fossil fuels.
Then in November, a group of states led by Texas sued BlackRock, Vanguard and State Street, all large asset management firms, for adopting pro-climate policies to reduce reliance on coal that the claimants alleged had pushed up energy prices.
Most recently, in December, the Republican-led judiciary committee of the House of Representatives, the US Congress’s lower house, accused “a cartel” of financial firms and climate activists of colluding to “impose radical ESG-goals” on US companies.
From Tuesday, after the US banks’ exodus, the NZBA still counted 141 banks among its members, including all the largest European banks. McCully said the departure of the US banks would give those remaining the opportunity to go further. He said: “By strengthening their commitments, NZBA banks can demonstrate that they have not simply used US obstructionism as an excuse to maintain the NZBA’s weak position.”
Keep dreamin’ McCully! This whole story is just delicious. And, look how the actions of a few courageous states gave several others the courage to act. Trump hads the same effect, of course, and House report nailed it by calling out the NZBA as “a cartel” of financial firms and climate activists of colluding to “impose radical ESG-goals” on US companies." This how we win!
