Letter: Nearly 80 groups request meeting with Treasury Department, detail financial risks of climate change

U.S. PIRG and 77 other environmental, public interest, human rights, and economic justice organizations sent a letter Wednesday to the Department of Treasury, detailing how the financial sector contributes to climate risks. The letter requested a meeting to discuss those risks and necessary actions to reverse course.

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As the letter explains:

…US banks, insurance companies, and asset managers continue to top the charts as the world’s largest financiers of the corporations driving climate chaos. In the five years since the Paris Agreement was signed, the four largest US banks were the world’s top funders of fossil fuels, collectively financing $976 billion, which comprised more than 25% of the total fossil fuel funding from the world’s 60 biggest banks. 

The groups urged Treasury to set clear expectations with financial firms, including that, “Transition plans must be consistent with achieving a rapid phase-out of fossil fuels and deforestation and include the following: an immediate end to financing for fossil fuel expansion; a complete exit from sectors such as coal mining, coal power, tar sands oil, extractive industries in the Arctic and Amazon, fracked oil and gas, offshore oil and gas, and liquified natural gas; and a phase-out of all financing for existing fossil fuel projects and companies.”

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Mike Litt

Director, Consumer Campaign, PIRG

Mike directs U.S. PIRG’s national campaign to protect consumers on Wall Street and in the financial marketplace by defending the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, and works for stronger privacy protections and corporate accountability in the wake of the Equifax data breach. Mike lives in Washington, D.C.

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