As I stood eye-to-eye with Bank of America (BofA) CEO, Brian Moynihan, a large stop-watch projected onto the wall of the conference room started to count down. I had two minutes before my microphone cut off and I needed to choose my words wisely.

Once a year BofA, like every publicly-held corporation, invites shareholders to meet with the CEO, along with the Board of Directors and the Senior Executive team. It’s our opportunity to raise questions about the bank’s performance and practice.

Rainforest Action Network, along with many of our friends and allies, has been calling on BofA to take some serious action on the climate. Together we’ve petitioned, written emails, placed phone calls, written letters, marched in the streets, visited bank branches and offices and used many creative strategies to get this message on the bank’s radar.

And now I had the ear of the top guy, for exactly 120 seconds.

At the beginning of the meeting, Brian made a speech listing off the bank’s proudest achievements. He included BofA’s environmental commitment. This is something we both like, I think it’s important for the bank to have a commitment to clean energy and energy efficiency and BofA has a good team working to meet their targets.

But here’s the problem, and this is what I told Brian: While BofA fanfares its commitment to leadership on climate change, at the same time it is the leading funder of the coal industry, the single largest source of U.S. climate emissions. This means that BofA is underwriting the very same climate pollution that it is trying to tackle.

The sad truth is that it is not possible for a bank to be both #1 in addressing climate change and #1 in financing the fossil fuel sector. These two goals are incompatible.

And so I asked:

“Which will you choose to prioritize? Will you choose to finance a transition to clean energy and a safe future for future generations, or will you choose the coal industry and a future of climate catastrophe?”

It looked as if Brian was listening, but I don’t think he really heard me, because he didn’t answer my question. Instead he replied by telling me some details about their environmental commitment and then asked Global technology and Operations Executive Cathy Bessant to explain the specifics of their clean energy financing.

If Brian didn’t really hear me, then perhaps he heard the words spoken by others in the room.

Person after person got up to the mic to speak about the many problems associated with the bank’s financing of the coal industry.

Ashish talked about Coal India and how their mines are destroying forests, critical tiger habitat and the health of Indian communities. Bonnie, Jim, Les, Eddie and Carly talked about Peabody and Arch Coals’ plans to transport 150 million tons of coal per year through their communities in Washington and Oregon for sale on the international export market. Lorelei, Kathy and Stephanie spoke about the daily horror experienced by Appalachians who live next to mountaintop removal coal mines. Sarah shared her experiences of living next to North Carolina’s Riverbend Coal plant, that has poisoned her community’s lake and inflicted serious illnesses on her family.

Barbara and June testified about the wide range of serious health impacts associated with coal and climate, delivering a petition to Brian from thousands of medical professionals and concerned citizens.

Faith leaders Reverend Nancy Allison and Rabbi Jonathan Frierich spoke to the moral imperative to take courageous action for the climate, as did Rabbi Margie Klein, who then sang an Appalachian spiritual to emphasize this point.

Was Brian listening now? I think he was; we dominated the meeting, causing him at one point to quip, “Is there anybody here who has a question that isn’t about climate change?”

Among the final speakers were students David, Meiron, Maria and Ali, who all asked Brian to consider the world he is leaving for future generations. “At the moment you are part of the problem”, said David, “Please can you be part of the solution?”

Todd Zimmer of RAN introduced the panel by noting that the audience included community members from Charlotte as well as student leaders of the campus fossil fuel divestment movement from Western Washington, Brown, Harvard, and Davidson. Todd remarked that although Bank of America has stated its intention to be a leader on climate and clean energy, its track record as the number one funder of the coal industry is in direct conflict with this ambition. The bank’s lending and financing decisions involving the coal industry that are made at the bank’s headquarters in Uptown Charlotte impose immense costs for communities in the U.S. and around the world.

The first guest speaker, Ashish Fernandes of Greenpeace spoke about the dangers of India’s coal industry to rural communities, the environment, and to investors exposed to risky energy infrastructure in the country. Contrary to the myth that a coal boom in India is inevitable due to the country’s energy needs, most new coal plants and mines face huge community opposition across India. In the last three years alone, courts have sent back at least four different power plants to drawing board. India produces 65 percent of its electricity from coal, and produces 90% of its coal from open pit mines, which endanger over a million hectares of forest, and threaten the livelihoods of forest-dependent communities in the country’s coal belt. Fortunately, wind is now cheaper than new coal plants in India and solar will reach grid parity with coal in under four years. However, the enduring influence of India’s coal lobby risks locking the country into coal dependence.

Next, Barbara Gottlieb, the director of health and advocacy for Physicians for Social Responsibility spoke to the global impacts of climate change on health. She began by highlighting that climate change is no longer a theoretical problem: It is happening now, and it is happening to us. Furthermore, she emphasized that climate change is not just an environmental issue. The British medical journal The Lancet called climate change “the health challenge of the 21^st Century.” Barbara noted that climate change is associated with more frequent and more intense storms, extreme heat waves, and drought, all of which pose acute risks to human health. She concluded by stressing that there is a way forward for Bank of America and the financial sector: Shifting their financing to clean, renewable energy.

Next, Bonnie McKinley from Portland, Oregon spoke to her experiences working with Power Past Coal and Rising Tide North America to fight plans to export coal from Wyoming and Montana’s Powder River Basin through ports on the Pacific Northwest. Currently, Arch Coal, Peabody Energy, Kinder Morgan, and other companies have introduced plans to build export infrastructure to ship Powder River Basin coal to be burned in India, China, and elsewhere in Asia. These proposed coal export terminals would bring up to 70 coal trains per day (each up to a mile-and-a-half long) through residential neighborhoods, leaving a trail of heavy metal-laden coal dust and putting communities at risk for derailments. Bonnie concluded on a hopeful note, remarking that a proposed railway for coal exports would never be built because, in the words of activist Vanessa Braided Hair, “Arch Coal understands money. What Arch Coal doesn’t understand is community. They don’t understand history. They don’t understand the Cheyenne people whose ancestors fought and died for the land that they are proposing to destroy. They don’t understand the fierceness with which the people, both Indian and non-Indian, in southeastern Montana love the land.” Bonnie also had a message for her baby boomer peers, urging them to take action to protect their communities and the climate: “Please get out and work for our special planet.”

Finally, Kathy Selvage from Wise County, West Virgina spoke about her decade-long experience fighting the impacts of mountaintop removal mining in her community and throughout Appalachia. She began by calling for the bank to “return to the integrity I knew decades ago” as an employee of a predecessor bank, Wise County National. Kathy spoke of her mother, who “would go outside and read the bible on front porch, then raise eyes to ponder what she had just read. When she raised her eyes, she saw a beautiful mountain across from her.” But after Glen Morgan Properties destroyed the mountain as part of one of their mountaintop removal mines, when her mother raised her eyes, “she saw the devastation of god’s creation.” The devastation wrought by the coal company that destroyed her community inspired Kathy to become active in the fight against mountaintop removal.

Kathy concluded by urging the audience to think about the interconnections between climate change, mountaintop removal, and other environmental issues. Faced with growing evidence of environmental threats hurting our communities and the environment, she reminded us that “we can no longer afford to stand still like we’re not a part of this planet.”

They are demanding an end to the havoc that Bank of America and the coal industry have wreaked on our lives. These brave people include Barbara Gottlieb from Physicians for Social Responsibility, who researches how coal causes respiratory diseases; Lorelei Scarbro, who comes from a family of coal miners and had mountains blown up in her West Virginian backyard for tiny seams of coal; and Ashish Fernandes from India—where coal was a false promise for a poor country to get rich but instead destroyed the health of thousands of innocent people.

Today, we need your help to deliver an additional blow to Bank of America: to call in and demand that it is time to stop funding King Coal. With hundreds—even thousands—of us calling in, this will disrupt operations on the day of the bank’s biggest public facing event all year.

** We’ve updated the phone number below, after Bank of America disconnected the first one.  Keep up the pressure! **

Will you help us prove to Bank of America that these people are not alone? Call the office of Bank of America CEO, Brian Moynihan. Here’s his number: (866) 826 – 8989

Leading up to today, shareholders and bank executives have felt the crescendo of our grassroots organizing in Charlotte. We have disseminated the message that Bank of America is the leading funder of coal and so clearly doesn’t care about its impact on climate change with several creative tactics. We’ve greeted bank shareholders the minute they landed at the Charlotte airport, plastered ads all over downtown Charlotte and the perimeter of the bank’s headquarters, flyered every hotel door where shareholders are staying; and, today—our activists are accompanied by a 20×12 ft mobile billboard parked outside of the shareholder meeting as they march in.

Bank of America knows we’re here. Let them know you’re here, as well.

Since today is such a ripe opportunity because of this public-facing moment, we need to pick up the phone and call. Please take a few minutes today to call Bank of America CEO Brian Moynihan and let him know that Bank of America needs to stop funding coal. Here’s how:

1. Call (866) 826 – 8989

2. If someone answers the phone, ask to speak to Brian Moynihan (it’s highly unlikely they will put you through). Whether your call is answered by voicemail or a real person, be polite and respectful, but above all make sure you state how seriously you’re taking Bank of America’s decision to keep funding the declining industry of coal.

Here’s a sample call script:

Hello, my name is ____{name}____ and I’m calling today to tell Brian Moynihan that Bank of America cannot be #1 in addressing climate change when it is the #1 funder of coal.

I am deeply disturbed by how this decision is affecting the quality of our lives and future.

I demand that Bank of America stop pumping billions of dollars into the coal industry.

Thank you for your time.

3. After you call, click the button below to report how it went. It’s important we get an accurate count of how many folks made a call, and what Bank of America’s response is.

 

It’s time Bank of America is held accountable as the #1 funder of the U.S. coal industry—the bank is responsible for funding the decimation of purple mountains majesty via mountaintop coal mining (MTR); underwriting coal mines that have caused irreversible black lung to working class miners; and financially supporting contaminated, undrinkable water in once pristine streams. No financial institution should have this much power over our communities and our future.

Trust me, our mighty crew here in Charlotte will feel the amplified power of every phone call you make. Thank you in advance for standing up with us today. Together, we can be heard—because there are more of us than them.

For the past two years, RAN has been calling on the bank to get serious about addressing climate change.This is a bank that declares a “commitment to positive environmental change” proudly on its website and a bank that has fanfared multi-billion dollar climate initiatives. However, the bank is also the leading underwriter of the U.S. coal industry, the single largest source of U.S. climate emissions. This means that bank of America is actually underwriting the climate change that it claims to want to tackle.

The sad truth is that it is not possible for a bank to be both #1 in addressing climate change and #1 in financing the coal sector. These two goals are simply incompatible.

I’ve been terrified about what we’re doing to the climate for at least ten years, but the past 12 months of extreme weather event has underlined the reality of climate change and the urgent need for action. From Superstorm Sandy’s devastation on the eastern seaboard, to the droughts endured by the Midwest and Plains states, and the wildfires that raged across the Rocky Mountains last summer, the planet is sending us a loud and clear message that it’s in distress. These were major headline stories, but the impacts were truly felt everywhere: over the year, more than 69,000 local heat records were set. Even as I type these words, communities in North Charlotte are being evacuated due to flooding from weeks of heavy rain.

I’m joined here in Charlotte by more than 30 friends and allies, each with a personal reason for coming to talk to Bank of America (BofA) about climate change. This morning we held a press conference and I stood with Indian campaigner, Ashish Fernandes. Ashish spoke about the devastating impacts that BofA-funded coal mining companies have on his country’s biodiversity, water supplies and indigenous communities. We stood with Barbara Gottlieb of Physicians for Social Responsibility, who explained the serious health impacts of climate change and burning coal; these include strokes, asthma and malnutrition. We stood with Oregonian Jim Plunkett, who is fighting plans to build five new coal export terminals in the Pacific North West, and we stood with local Charlotte Pastor, Nancy Allison, who spoke to our moral imperative to protect the climate for future generations.

Tomorrow we’ll take our message directly to BofA’s CEO Brian Moynihan, to their Board of Directors and to the bank’s shareholders. We will ask the bank to stop hedging and make a firm choice:

Will the bank continue to fund climate chaos and community devastation, or will the bank fund a clean energy future?

The Church of Stop Shopping returns to New York now, after a week in the Bay Area.  A highlight:  we launched the “Extinction Resurrection” campaign at the front doors and inside the big banks that finance climate disruption. Then, each evening we went indoors to a concert stage–and direct activism spiced up the prayers, songs, and shouts of “Earthalujah!”

In “The Revolt of the Golden Toads” tour, we concentrated our crawling and hopping on JPMorgan Chase and Bank of America–which move billions into coal-fired power plants. We believe that the Golden Toad was forced into extinction 25 years ago by drought conditions in their cloud forest home–destruction that was funded by these banks.

Our impact this week in San Francisco? It is impossible to make Nielsen Ratings from activism. Clearly more and more people know they must now be Earth radicals. Put some URGENCY in the EMERGENCY. Our post-big-daddy-god church, with the wonderful music, tries to activate direct action. In nine Bay Area performance events we had something short of 2000 individuals in our audiences. Our media coverage was good and in our interviews we tried to be guided by the Extinction Resurrection theme, which is surreal and funny–but people get it.  It’s about survival.

We’re not celebrities. Celebrities don’t “Stop Shop.” So we have to land the message manually. During “Toads” we went at it non-stop for 6 days and 6 nights. The upside for the non-celebrity approach is this: it builds communities. (We call people who join our church–the citizens of “Earthalujahville.”  For instance, we were fed, transported, and offered beds by Earthalujahville citizens as we zig-zagged around the Bay.)

Everyone in the Stop Shopping Church experienced Hurricane Sandy–and the super storm created our new songs and put us into the masks of extinct beings. Last November we were left thinking that Earth is destroying consumerism on purpose. Earth is interrupting the sale. Why? Because consumerism keeps us a bunch of little apex predators and that adds up to a horrific Super Devil. Then again, anything that distracts us from this Eco-pocalypse is the Devil and must be cast out.

Extinction Resurrection. The Dark and the Light. Honest assessment of the current environmental movement leaves us feeling dark. But the ecstatic release of a good direct action raises us to the light. Darker and Brighter. Extinction and Resurrection. It’s the up and down and up of Evolution. We felt the darkness when we performed at Oakland City Hall and felt the memory of police violence there during Occupy. But moments later we unloaded some happy toad gospel at the Chase Bank across the street. They closed the bank and locked the doors after our first song. So they had to seal off the hushed high church of the bank. So we sang on the sidewalk and sent happy curses up into the surveillance system. Eventually we’ll be naked animals hopping on Jamie Dimon’s desk. Earthalujah!

We wish to thank RAN for posting these reports. Now the toad hops back to NYC, then over the Atlantic.

To be updated with Rev. Billy and The Church of Stop Shopping tour dates, click here for tour dates.

Photo Credit: Steve Rhodes

As our title indicates, coal has become an extreme investment. Long touted as a cheap and abundant fuel, coal’s environmental and public health costs are becoming increasingly acute: A 2011 Harvard School of Public Health study found that coal mining and combustion in the U.S. imposes between a third to over one half of a trillion dollars in externalized environmental and health costs each year.

Despite mounting evidence of the extreme impacts of the coal industry on the climate and human health, in 2012, US bank financing practices have failed to address the acute risks and impacts of the financing the “worst of the worst” companies in the coal industry. Even as U.S. coal consumption for power generation fell 11 percent in 2012, the top three U.S. financiers of the coal industry (Bank of America, Citigroup, and JPMorgan Chase) collectively financed an estimated $9 billion for mountaintop removal mining companies and the most coal-intensive power utilities last year. The report card also finds that the broader banking sector remains deeply exposed to the coal industry, providing $20.8 billion in financing for these companies in 2012.

With few exceptions, bank lending and financing policies for the coal sector for this year’s report card received disappointingly low grades. Although Wells Fargo improved to a “C” for taking steps to improve its mountaintop removal mining lending practices and HSBC North America received a “C-“ for policies covering its lending to coal-fired power, grades for the rest of the U.S. banking sector showed almost no improvement from last year.

The long-term financial outlook for companies involved with coal mining, transportation, and combustion remains highly uncertain. As we note in one of our report’s case studies, Patriot Coal, a coal mining company with major MTR operations filed for bankruptcy last year and agreed to phase out its MTR operations. Of the 12 other MTR companies profiled in the report, only one had an S&P credit rating above ‘junk.’ Last month, investors scrapped a controversial plan to export coal through Coos Bay, Oregon. And on April 16^th, the Texas power company Energy Future Holdings (formerly TXU) announced plans to file for bankruptcy due in part to the deteriorating financial picture for the company’s fleet of coal-fired power plants.

Last year, even with the coal industry’s bankruptcies, risky proposals for coal plant upgrades, and coal export terminals, Wall Street doubled down on its exposure to the industry, despite its incredibly uncertain future. Unfortunately, they’re not just gambling with their own money. Bad investments can be written off, but coal’s impacts on human health and the environment are severe, permanent, and irreversible.

UPenn students sit-in at Dow Chemical campus recruitment, 1967

I had the great privilege of representing Rainforest Action Network at the student-led Power Up! Divest Fossil Fuels Convergence. Hosted by Swarthmore Mountain Justice, students from around the country gathered for conversations about movement culture and strategy. I was thrilled to find myself amidst a dynamic and emergent group that asked all the right questions: what does student autonomy look like? How can students use their privilege to act in solidarity with extraction communities and people on the front lines of climate impacts? How can students create the signifiers of a resistance culture, the songs and images that can sustain a movement for justice over the long term?

Compared with the campus climate activists of the past, the students of the divestment campaign have a certain edge. Currently united by a tactic consciously culled from the anti-apartheid movement of the 1960s, 70s and 80s, the campus divestment movement possesses an awareness of movement theory and history, past and present. The orange felt squares pinned to the divestistas’ chests are a riff from the Quebecois student uprisings, and demonstrate an intentionality and commitment to long-haul organizing that should inspire great hope for this movement. Divestment activists are aware that they stand on the shoulders of preceding justice movements, and look to history to inform their tactics.

All this to say, students and their opposition should prepare for escalation. Time and time again, campus-based movements for justice have embraced tactics that evolved from symbolic, polite appeals to the power structure to direct intervention in the same, especially when those structures are found to be unyielding in the face of student power through “legitimate channels” (say, campus-wide student referendums). In the past, appeals to campus based authorities have tended to broaden and extend to direct confrontation with offending industry itself, in the present case, the fossil fuel industry and its abettors. The potential for such an escalatory evolution in the current divestment milieu is good news for the climate justice movement, and bad news for the fossil fuel industry and their allies.

Already, student divestment organizers are realizing that the pernicious influence of the fossil fuel industry in the university extends far beyond the direct holdings of endowments. In fact, the university system serves the fossil fuel industry in a number of direct ways: by providing legitimacy and greenwashing credentials through corporate partnerships, by offering up university land and research capacity for “innovations” in extraction processes, and, perhaps most insidiously, by churning out an educated and corporate-trained labor force to ride the desks and populate the labs of the fossil fuel machine. In their process of uncovering past movement history, the divestment organizers will surely learn how past movements have intervened in this nexus between university and corporation. Let this post present a partial uncovering of campus recruitment interventions, past and present.

Vietnam-Era Recruitment Disruptions

Notre Dame students block Dow Chemical recruitment, 1969

While there are surely antecedents, the first accounts of student-led campus recruitment interventions as a widespread tactic appear in the late 1960s, several years into the evolution of the campus anti-war movement. Across the country, student resistors coordinated sit-ins and shut downs of both military and corporate recruiters, including Dow Chemical, which developed napalm and profited from its deployment in the villages of Vietnam. In February, 1967, 75 Oberlin students sat in to block US Navy recruiters; by May, the Oberlin sit-ins expanded to over 200 students blocking military recruitment. In the fall of that year, students from California to Maine sat in to block Dow Chemical and General Motors recruitment sessions on the grounds that profiting from war is immoral. In many cases, these protests were successful at completely denying military and corporate recruiters from gaining access to students, sometimes on a semi-permanent basis. On some campuses, including University of Pennsylvania, students expanded their activities to opposition in corporate-university partnerships that produced chemical and biological weapons.

Anti-Apartheid Recruitment Disruptions

Twenty years later, a surging student opposition to South African apartheid and CIA interventions in Central America picked up the recruitment intervention tactic. In 1985, 450 University of Colorado-Boulder students were arrested as they disrupted CIA recruitment interviews. In 1986, 250 anti-apartheid divestment organizers at UCLA occupied the University Placement Center, “where corporations hold recruitment meetings.” As the linked dispatch from the antiapartheid student movement demonstrates, this action was part of a widespread and coordinated (yet autonomous) escalation that expanded beyond university investment boards and extended to direct anti-corporate action. At the UCLA recruitment center, students passed out literature explaining  “they had selected the career-placement office as the focus of their protest because it…represents the University of California’s complicity with apartheid South Africa. It is in this office that companies like IBM, Hewlett-Packard, Bank of America and Shell, companies which help continue the oppression of apartheid, recruit students to work for corporate irresponsibility.” Sound familiar to our context?

Millennial Derecruitment

Yale students Stop the Brain Drain, 2011

More recent times have provided examples of coordinated student interference in unjust corporate recruitment. In 2005, the huge Campus Anti-war Network (CAN) marked the second anniversary of the war in Iraq with disruptions and shut-downs of campus military recruitment, spawning actions from coast to coast. CAN organizers incorporated an economic justice analysis into their disruptions, pointing to the disparity between military recruitment on private and public campuses, and presenting students with alternatives to enlistment. Rutgers student organizer Ian Chinich wrote, “We hope that the public and the anti-war movement realize that counter-recruitment is one of the most effective strategies for fighting against the war and is also a moral imperative.” Seven years later, students members of the Occupy movement launched “Stop the Brain Drain,” disrupting and shutting down the recruitment sessions of Wall Street banks defrauding the public. At campuses including Yale, Princeton, Harvard, University of Illinois, Dartmouth, Cornell, Brown, and UPenn, students organized to kick recruiters off campus and save their peers from joining the ranks of Wall Street’s calculating drones.

Divestment Disruptions

What of the current fossil fuel divestment movement? This semester, I’ve had the pleasure of coordinating with students on ten campuses in five states to disrupt Bank of America’s campus recruitment sessions. As the number one underwriter of the U.S. coal industry, Bank of America profits from and makes possible mountaintop removal mining and coal burning infrastructure. More than any other U.S. financial institution, Bank of America is responsible for coal’s contributions to the climate crisis, having pumped more than $6.4 billion into the industry over the last two years. Thankfully, student divestment organizers are pushing back at campuses like Harvard, UNC-Charlotte, UC Berkeley, NC State University, UNC-Chapel Hill, Boston College, MIT, Florida International University, and New York University. After an initial round of disruptions on five campuses, including a 30-student deluge in the UC Berkeley career center, student disruptors at MIT and UNC-Charlotte found Bank of America recruiters hiding behind police guard to prevent further disruption (see a video here). At Florida International University, students discovered that campus administrators had been warned by the bank to watch out for “coal protestors.” Last week, at New York University, divestment organizers and their Occupy allies were successful at completely shutting down a Bank of America recruitment session: the bank canceled the entire session just hours before it was set to begin. The takeaway? Disruption of campus recruitment events has a direct impact on the operations of the fossil fuel industrial complex.

Where to from here?

What’s next? The fossil fuel industry and their financial abettors are using your campuses for their greenwashing purposes, and are recruiting our generation for jobs that, in an era of rapidly changing climate, are meaningless.  Bank of America’s recruitment sessions are finished for this semester, but next fall they will be back on your campus, recruiting your peers to work for their profits and at the expense of our planet. I have a vision of the campus divestment network standing up to shut down Bank of America’s recruitment activities, a threat too big for the bank to ignore. This will only be possible if students are willing to embrace their own autonomy, and figure out what degree of interference is possible and appropriate for their context. With our combined power, our movement has the potential to shut down the operations of climate change’s worst villains. Our responsibility to extraction and climate impacted communities demands that we use our position as members of a university community to confront and inhibit bad actors like Bank of America. To do that, our movements must move beyond symbolic protest to directly confront and disrupt the operations of the corporations that are destroying our future. There are many tactics, justice is the goal. For now, you can sign here to tell Bank of America’s CEO to expect resistance on your campus.

A Bank of America recruiter flees divestistas, UC-Berkeley, 2013

This mine cannot be built without the support of the banks that finance Arch. Of particular concern, nine major banks (Bank of America, Bank of Montreal, BBVA, Citigroup, Credit Suisse, Morgan Stanley, PNC Financial, Royal Bank of Scotland, and Union Bank) loaned $250 million dollars to Arch Coal last November, providing a financial lifeline to the coal company.

For these banks, this loan to Arch Coal is just a routine transaction. But for residents of Blair, the stakes are a lot higher. The town used to be a thriving community of 700 people and now has less than 50 residents because of the extreme dangers posed by existing mountaintop removal mines near the town. The people who stayed behind live with dynamite blasts, dust from mine sites, and water that is no longer safe to drink. Arch’s proposed mine would further harm Blair’s residents, while obliterating an irreplaceable piece of history. (See this video from the Blair Mountain Heritage Alliance for interviews with residents of Blair on the impacts of mountaintop removal on the community.)

Six of the banks on the Arch loan have policies that prohibit financing companies that violate human rights. If these policy commitments were working as they should have been, the Arch loan should have raised several red flags due to several human rights concerns, including as the following:

• The potential water, noise, and air pollution impacts from the mine will threaten the human rights to water and health of Blair’s residents.
• Arch’s past mining operations near Blair that, according to testimony of Arch officials, “would make life so miserable for many Blair residents that they would want to sell their homes and move” raise concerns about the human right to housing.
• Human rights norms also proscribe the intentional destruction of cultural heritage sites such as the Blair Mountain battlefield.

So will Arch’s planned mine violate human rights, even though it is in the United States? Due to systemic regulatory failure on the part of state and federal environmental protection agencies, the risk of human rights violations from mountaintop removal mining remains acute. And Arch’s environmental and community relations track record at its existing mines in Blair, combined with sworn statements by Arch employees such as “It is easier to mine coal without people around” cast doubt on Arch’s willingness or capacity to respect human rights norms.

For Arch’s lenders, Arch’s planned mine raises serious concerns: these banks failed to flag a transaction that was deeply flawed on environmental and human rights grounds. Arch’s lenders should, at a minimum, overhaul or establish lending policies and due diligence processes that are robust, verifiable, and capable of screening out similarly egregious transactions in the future. For unless they are implemented effectively, lending policy commitments are merely paper promises.

As we conclude in the update, this transaction should serve as a warning that respect for international human rights norms is no longer “optional” for banks: The U.N. Human Rights Council’s adoption of the Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights in 2011 established a global baseline for the corporate responsibility to respect human rights, which Arch and its lenders have failed to meet.

Guest post by Bob Kincaid - Board Chair of Coal River Mountain Watch

It is a historic day for Appalachia. Long one of America’s most neglected regions, Appalachia has suffered for years from abuses by the coal industry. Among the latest affronts are horrible health consequences outlined in a series of scientific papers detailing the diseases and birth defects that disporportionately consist of people living near mountaintop removal coal extraction sites. Today, the Appalachian Communities Health Emergency (A.C.H.E.) Act, HR 526, was introduced in the House of Representatives. It is the first and only bill ever introduced that would end mountaintop removal and allow Appalachia and her people a chance to begin the healing that is so badly needed.

The A.C.H.E. Act puts a moratorium on new mountaintop removal permits and orders a wide-ranging, full-scale study to determine the relationship between 5.5 MILLION pounds of high explosives used on Appalachia daily and the broad spectrum of elevated cancer, heart disease, and birth defect rates–not to mention excess deaths–that happen in communities near mountaintop removal.

The effort is spear-headed by the Appalachian Communities Health Emergency Campaign, which is comprised of Appalachian people who must deal with the terror and heartbreak of mountaintop removal every day. We at the A.C.H.E. Campaign are deeply grateful to have talented, committed allies like Rainforest Action Network and thank them for standing beside us in this essential struggle for our very existence. Working together, we can all take a stand and make a difference in the lives of millions when we reach out to our members of the House and Senate to demand passage of the A.C.H.E. Act–demanding a future not of disease and blight, but of hope and health for Appalachia’s children and future generations as yet unborn.

For Appalachia. For the World. For the Future.

 Bob Kincaid lives in West Virginia and is currently Board Chair of Coal River Mountain Watch. He is also an internet radio host on The HORN. Bob can be found on Twitter: @BobKincaid

Alpha Natural Resources’s lawyers have had their hands full with environmental litigation lately, as we detail in a RAN Coal Risk Update released today. During 2012, environmental groups filed multiple lawsuits against Alpha over alleged water contamination from selenium at the company’s mountaintop removal mines.

The company’s 2011 sustainability report advertised that it had a “99.7% water quality compliance rate.” That sounds pretty good, but the Sierra Club and its allies are a savvy bunch of litigators who don’t usually pick fights with coal companies unless they intend to win.

So should investors be concerned about potential selenium-related risks lurking in Alpha’s claimed 0.3% non-compliance rate? The Rainforest Action Network is not in the investment advisory business, but the recent experience of one of Alpha’s industry peers, Patriot Coal, might raise some eyebrows for investors.

In 2007, Patriot’s annual report to investors didn’t include a single mention of selenium as a risk factor for investors. But then the lawsuits started: The Sierra Club, Appalachian Mountain Advocates, Ohio Valley Environmental Coalition, West Virginia Highlands Conservancy and other environmental advocates sued the company over alleged selenium contamination at the company’s surface mines. Five years and multiple settlements later, the company conceded to investors that its estimated selenium cleanup costs had climbed to half a billion dollars and could even rise further.

Selenium is a mineral found in rock and soil at several mountaintop removal mining sites in Appalachia. Although it is an essential micronutrient, it is toxic to humans and wildlife in large doses. And as Patriot Coal learned the hard way, it can be extraordinarily expensive to clean up at mine sites. Patriot’s selenium story ended quite badly for its shareholders, who were wiped out when the company filed for bankruptcy in 2012 due to a combination of pension liabilities, declining demand for coal, and environmental compliance costs.

Of course, Alpha’s courtroom battle over selenium may or may not end like Patriot’s. So to estimate the risks investors face from Alpha’s selenium litigation, we turned to the numbers from the West Virginia Department of Environmental Protection (WVDEP). Mining companies are required to test water at mine outfalls for contaminants such as selenium and report this data to the WVDEP. When these readings exceed permitted limits, the WVDEP can issue violations, and third parties can also sue to force companies to comply.

Using WVDEP data obtained by our allies through Freedom of Information Act requests, we found that between 2005 and 2010, Alpha’s surface mines in West Virginia received penalties about a quarter as frequently as Patriot’s and had selenium readings that exceeded federal guidelines about half as frequently. Although Alpha’s state-wide selenium compliance record is not as bad as Patriot’s, the data suggests that selenium non-compliance at several Alpha surface mines exposes investors to significant risks from lawsuits such as the ones the company currently faces.

As the bankruptcy of Patriot Coal illustrates, managing selenium compliance in the courtroom rather than in the boardroom can expose investors to significant risks. Alpha could reassure investors by, for example, reporting its selenium monitoring data or disclosing the details of its strategy for managing selenium compliance at its mountaintop removal mines. This information would help investors better understand whether the company is wise to roll the dice in the courtroom against plaintiffs who have already won major legal victories against one of its industry peers.

Early in the morning, about half a dozen UC students staged interventions into Bank of America’s recruitment interviews at the UC Career Center — and raised concerns about the bank’s involvement with the coal sector. The student interventions stopped the recruitment interviews as Bank of America staff heard about the impacts of the bank’s investment portfolio.

A few moments later, about 20 more students and activists joined them at the UC Career Center. The second wave further confronted the Career Center and Bank of America’s recruitment staff with questions about the bank’s policies on coal, climate change, and greenwashing. Outside the Career Center, students and activists rallied to call out the bank’s destructive investment practices as potential recruits entered the building.

Bank of America is one of the top funders of the coal industry, both in the mining and coal-burning utility sectors.  Between 2010 and 2011, it pumped $6.8 billion into the U.S. coal industry, the single largest source of U.S. greenhouse gas emissions.

Gabe Schwartzman, a student at UC Berkeley who participated in–and helped organize–the action said: “Students everywhere are refusing to work for the largest funder of coal and climate change—Bank of America. Until the bank addresses its coal problem, young people on college campuses will be bringing this issue to the table.”

This action was one of a series of actions happening across the country targeting Bank of America recruiters on campuses across the country. As student activists are organizing campus divestment campaigns against fossil fuels, and climate activists are taking action against pipelines, coal mines, and fracking wells — the campaign against the coal industry’s financial backers is beginning to heat up.

Unfortunately for the bank, UNCC’s best and brightest were there to protest Bank of America and their funding for coal and climate chaos.

Six activists, supported by UNCC alumni and students, burst into a Bank of America campus recruitment interview and delivered a clear message: “Bank of America, Divest from Coal!”

Maiada Carpano, a recent graduate of UNCC who helped plan today’s action, said: “This is a strong statement from students. Bank of America is pushing students into financial debt and the bank is destroying our future by funding coal and climate chaos. We will not further Bank of America’s destructive agenda by working with them.”

Ms. Carpano added: “We ask students across the country to join us in exposing Bank of America’s greenwash by disrupting their campus recruitment events.”

Student power is on the march; across the country, campuses are uniting against university investments in the fossil fuel industry. Students know that investments in fossil fuels–like coal and oil–are investments in climate chaos and mass extinction.

At UNCC, students and community allies worked together to leverage their power against Bank of America’s massive investments in the coal industry. Over the past 2 years, the bank has pumped more than $6.4 billion dollars into mountaintop removal mines and coal-fired power plants. Imagine an amount that is likely more than your local university’s entire endowment funneled exclusively into coal, the largest source of climate changing emissions in our country. That’s some dirty business.

It is past time Bank of America divests from the coal industry, but the bank still needs convincing. That’s where student power comes in. Over the upcoming months–maybe even next week–Bank of America recruiters will come to campuses looking to hire students for internships and careers. Would you take a job with one of the nation’s largest climate criminals?

RAN is calling for students, alumni, and allies across the country to push back against Bank of America’s campus recruitment activities. Collectively, students can withhold their labor and consent for Bank of America’s climate-destroying coal financing. By leveraging our voices at these key opportunities, our movement can cut the financial legs out from under the coal industry. To start taking action, email RAN’s global finance campaign at: todd@ran.org

Immediately before the heavily guarded economic summit was set to begin, an inconvenient visitor arrived and demanded to be let into the meeting: Hurricane Sandy.

Buoyed on a flood of climate protestors from around North Carolina, the 12-foot Hurricane Sandy puppet ensured that responsibility for the ongoing global climate catastrophe wasn’t ignored, but was placed squarely where it belongs: on the shoulders of coal pushing corporations like Bank of America and Duke Energy.

While Bank of America’s executives focus on the bank’s profits, the outlook for our communities is bleak. Thanks to Bank of America’s coal financing, the outlook is rapid climate change, increasing drought, famine, and superstorms like Sandy. The presence of Sandy’s likeness at this economic outlook conference points to the fact that in the months to come, climate will be impossible to ignore—and will majorly disrupt global markets and communities.

Featuring weeping eyes and strands of hair inscribed with the neighborhoods and boroughs devastated by the hurricane, the giant Sandy puppet assailed the meeting’s entryways, and repeatedly faced off with swarms of Charlotte police. While police were able to prevent the Hurricane Sandy puppet from accessing the meeting, these security forces failed to prevent the climate protests from disrupting the meeting.

Only a few minutes into the panel discussion, which focused heavily on Bank of America executive, David Darnell and Duke Energy CEO, Jim Rogers, a RAN activist jumped onstage and unfurled a banner reading “Bank of America: Stop Funding Coal.” The message was successfully delivered, and the activist was ushered out of the building—but not before media took notice and documented the intervention.

As urgency continues to build around the need for strong climate action to end investment and consumption of fossil fuels, bad actors like Bank of America will experience increasing pressure to stop banking on the global catastrophe of climate change—and we won’t stop until they do.

Blair Mountain, West Virginia

A Guest Blog by Brandon Nida, Organizer—Blair Mountain Heritage Alliance

Many people have not heard of the Battle of Blair Mountain, let alone a place called Adkins Fork in Logan County, West Virginia. But in 1921, the Adkins Fork area was the scene of an intense battle between miners attempting to organize and a private army trying to stop them. It is part of the larger Blair Mountain battlefield that stretches 14-miles along Spruce Fork Ridge, the site of the largest labor battle in US history. Ten thousand miners fought for five days against the private army entrenched on the ridgeline, with both sides having high-powered rifles and machine guns. Three regiments of federal troops sent by President Harding were finally able to halt the conflict.

Currently Adkins Fork and the larger Blair Mountain battlefield is threatened by an extremely destructive form of coal mining called mountaintop removal (MTR). This is a process where mountains are blasted and a huge amount of leftover material is pushed into valleys, filling them up and creating a flat moonscape where rolling hills and hardwood forest once were. MTR is a process that in recent years has increasingly been tied to health problems such as rare forms of cancer, respiratory illnesses, and birth defects.

At the foot of Blair Mountain is the town of Blair, where I live and work. In the late 1990s, Blair was a community of about 700 people, and currently there are only about 70 residents left. Aggressive buyouts preceded plans to MTR mine around the town and led to the systematic depopulation of the area. The people who remained had to live with constant blasting behind the town, carcinogenic dust rolling off the site, and the contamination of drinking water with heavy metals. But people from Blair were some of the first coalfield residents to speak out against MTR, something that is hard to do in central Appalachia where the coal industry dominates the social and political landscape.

Currently we are fending off six different permits that would impact the battlefield and the communities around it. Our biggest struggle is with the Adkins Fork permit, which is situated in the heart of the battlefield and right above the headwaters of the town of Blair. The Adkins Fork permit is currently up for renewal, and we have mounted a major campaign to block this permit. This campaign will be a tough one and will continue over the next few months.

The Adkins Fork permit, which is being sought by Arch Coal, is symbolic of the increasing risk that investors and banks are taking by investing in companies (like Arch Coal) that have MTR operations. It is a permit that has multiple deficiencies, and is being contested by a wide range of concerned citizens, including: community members, retired coal miners, archaeologists, labor groups, environmentalists, and others across central Appalachia and the rest of the nation.

If Arch Coal is able to proceed with the Adkins Fork permit, they would destroy one of the only areas we know for certain was occupied by the miners during the Battle. Along with this permit, there are currently 17,000 acres permitted or under review for the Spruce Fork watershed. It is comprised of geological strata high in selenium. Selenium is a bio-accumulative compound that is highly detrimental to the nervous system of animals and humans, and is extremely expensive to contain or remove from the ecosystems once it is released. This small compound is one of the reasons Patriot Coal, a major operator of MTR mining in Central Appalachia, was forced to publicly halt all MTR operations just last month. Streams in the Spruce Fork watershed have already been shown to have higher amounts of selenium than regulation allows.

MTR on Blair Mountain

In addition to Arch Coal seeking a permit that has a wide coalition of people opposing it and which has high levels of selenium, the risk investors take when putting their money into companies like Arch continues to increase. The West Virginia State Historic Preservation Office refuses to sign off on this permit due to the destruction of major archaeological resources. Valley fills, of which the Adkins Fork permit has three, have been coming under increasing scrutiny by federal regulators. With the stripping of thousands of acres of vegetation and topsoil, the risk of flooding becomes more prevalent.  As more peer-reviewed science shows the link between MTR and severe health problems, companies such as Arch are finding it harder to externalize these risks onto communities such as the town of Blair.

For these reasons and more, those who continue to invest in companies like Arch that conduct strip mining operations such as the Adkins Fork permit take on increasing risk. Right now, Arch Coal’s stock is down to around seven dollars per share from a high of around 73 per share in 2008. Arch Coal’s credit rating is Ba3 sub-prime, just one level above where Patriot Coal (NYSE: PCX) was before going bankrupt.

The Adkins Fork permit is just one permit by Arch Coal that would impact the town of Blair and the Blair Mountain battlefield. Companies such as Arch are attempting to destroy not just the environment, but whole communities, heritage, and people’s health. Citizen groups and environmental organizations have become more proficient in being able to challenge and block these permits. In fact, one of the only operations to have been halted in mid-operation was in Blair – the Daltex surface mine operated by Arch Coal. In addition, the Spruce No. 1 surface mine, which is the largest MTR mine ever permitted in central Appalachia and which sits on another ridge above Blair, has been the subject of intense litigation for over a decade.

For those of you who would like to take part in stopping companies like Arch Coal and Alpha Natural Resources (ANR) from destroying the Blair Mountain battlefield and other mountains in central Appalachia, there are definite ways you can help and join in our efforts. Even if you live far away, we need you to take a stand and join in our Adkins Fork campaign and the larger efforts to preserve Blair Mountain and stop MTR.

The first step is working in solidarity with a group of community members, organizers, retired coal miners, archaeologists, historians, environmentalists, and others who will be taking part in a public conference with the West Virginia Department of Environmental Protection this Thursday. While we attempt to show the WV DEP why this permit renewal should be denied, we need as many people as possible to circulate and sign our petition directed at the banks and investors who enable companies like Arch Coal to engage in these destructive operations.

This is not just about one permit, or one mountain, or one community, but is symbolic of the larger problem of destructive practices such as MTR, and the increasingly reckless investment and financing of these types of operations.
Take a stand today, and join our team. Tell banks and investors to stop financing the destruction of our homes and health. Stand with us and stay connected as we move through this national campaign. Only together can we stop destructive extractive processes such as MTR.

Brandon Nida is a native West Virginian who currently lives in Blair, WV. He is an organizer with the Blair Mountain Heritage Alliance, a board member of the Ohio Valley Environmental Coalition, and a member of the United Auto Workers. He is currently finishing the doctorate program in Anthropology/Archaeology at UC Berkeley.

Given all the talking Mr. Holliday does about sustainable business, it is a crushing irony that his “walking” includes presiding over Bank of America, the single largest funder of mountaintop removal coal companies.

Students at the University of Tennessee have noticed this significant inconsistency, and they are organizing a response. Mr. Holliday has been invited to a teach-in that will feature Coal River Mountain Watch president Bob Kincaid on the devastating impacts of mountaintop removal and what Bank of America, and Mr. Holliday, can do to stop it.

The following editorial was written by University of Tennessee Student David Hayes, and appeared in the UT Daily Beacon on December 4th, 2012.

Sustainability deserves bank chair’s attention

Upon looking back through their emails to Nov. 9, students will find an email from Chancellor Jimmy Cheek, informing them of UT’s decision to award an honorary doctorate in engineering to the leader in business sustainability and current chairman of Bank of America, Charles O. “Chad” Holliday. This is no small feat, and only three people before him can boast of this achievement. Holliday has a well-deserving résumé, highlighted with his past position of CEO of DuPont and his experience of providing leadership in national and international committees, summits and organizations centered on sustainability.

As a result of Holliday’s honorary degree, he will speak to the graduates during commencement and probably offer a few inspirational and optimistic words to the newest editions of the workforce. For me, this begs a question: is Chad Holliday doing his part to contribute to the glowing future he will speak of?

Most would say yes; however, I would have to disagree. Holliday has an extraordinary opportunity to inject his obvious belief of environmental sustainability into a situation that desperately needs it. Among many controversies, Bank of America is the nation’s largest financer of the coal industry and has funded destructive business practices, such as mountaintop removal (MTR). MTR is a particularly deadly form of coal mining which blasts the tops off mountains and fills the valleys with the toxic, displaced rubble. Hundreds of mountains in the Appalachians have been destroyed and hundreds of streams erased due to this destructive practice. If that weren’t enough to cause Holliday to act, communities across Appalachia have suffered due to the activities of Bank of America-funded coal companies. Studies have shown that MTR sites have life-threatening health impacts, such as contaminated drinking water and poor air quality, and a multitude of deaths can be contributed to this dangerous form of mining.

All this, and Holliday still will not stand up for the devastated communities, which is strange for someone who is known for being a champion in business sustainability.

As scientists keep reminding us, the impact of humans on climate change is real and already impacting the lives of people across the globe. This summer’s drought and Hurricane Sandy have taught many Americans about the cost of unsustainable practices, not unlike what Bank of America funds. Furthermore, the coal industry is suffering an increasing amount of criticism for being America’s largest source of climate emissions and devastating so many communities nationwide. The pressure is building and the internationally renowned expert on business sustainability has an excellent opportunity to lead Bank of America to a brighter and greener future.

Coincidentally, Holliday wrote a groundbreaking book called “Walking the Talk: The Business Case for Sustainable Development.” The book stresses that sustainable growth, which inherently has strong commitments to environmental and social justice, is necessary to add value to businesses. Funding businesses that overtly destroy Appalachian ecosystems and lowers the quality, and sometimes length, of lives for so many would seem to contradict his message.

Holliday will be a great speaker at commencement and will undoubtedly provide a memorable experience for all of those in attendance; however, for him to truly live up to all of the praise he will receive, Holliday will need to walk the talk and stand up for what he has said believes in. Holliday must strive to take to the first step toward a cleaner and sustainable future by ceasing loans to coal companies that practice mountaintop removal, and take further responsibility by setting a goal of emission reductions that includes all of its financed businesses.

David Hayes
Sophomore in Logistics

University of Tennessee at Knoxville

“This dusty old dust is a-gettin’ my home,  And I got to be driftin’ along.”

-Woody Guthrie, “So Long, It’s Been Good To Know Yuh”

This past weekend I watched Ken Burns’ new PBS documentary, “The Dust Bowl,” a great, insightful documentary drawing parallels to the dust bowl of the 1930’s and today’s environmental and climate crisis.

And of course it’s sponsored by Bank of America.

As a former history teacher, I can appreciate a new telling of environmental history before our movement even began.  But as an organizer targeting the root causes of climate change and the banks that fund them, I have to wonder what is going on?

The PBS documentary, which aired this month, chronicles America’s worst man-made ecological disaster. A deadly combination of the frenzied wheat boom of the “Great Plow-Up,” followed by a decade-long drought during the 1930s, wrecked America’s heartland.

The disaster was completely man made. During the 1910’s and 1920’s, the “Great Plow Up” had transformed millions of acres of natural grassland into wheat fields. With the Great Depression, farmers responded to falling wheat prices first with tearing up more land for bumper crops, and then many simply abandoned their fields.

When the drought of the 1930’s engulfed America’s breadbasket, there were no natural defenses to prevent the region from turning into a virtual “dust bowl.” Dust storms became commonplace. Static electricity disabled vehicles and could knock a man to the ground with a mere handshake. 850 million tons of top soil blew away in 1935. Dirt and dust blew as far away as New York City and Washington D.C. Incidentally, the dust bowl had “deniers” who said the phenomenon was “God’s will” or part of the natural cycle. (Sound familiar?)

The parallels drawn between the dust bowl and climate change in the film are stark. Markets and investors drove agricultural development, which led to the ecological crisis of the 1930’s. Big profits and fossil fuel prices today drive everything from tar sands development to coal exports, leading us to growing greenhouse gas emissions and climate change. Watching “The Dust Bowl” is a constant reminder to me of the extreme weather (hurricanes, drought, wildfires, etc.,) fueled by climate change, which we’ve been seeing more and more of over recent years. Furthermore, the poverty of communities in the 1930s dust bowl and the poverty of communities in today’s extraction zones were eerily familiar.

The lessons of Burns’ documentary seem to be lost on Bank of America’s decision-makers. Instead, they are spending big bucks on another public relations campaign, promoting environmental values and a history that needs to be learned from, while they continue to make profit from coal and other fossil fuels and ignoring the lessons of the past.

Rainforest Action Network has been talking for many years about why this egregious form of mining needs to be ended immediately.

For anyone who might want a reminder about what MTR is, watch this:

This is significant news. Patriot is the third largest producer of MTR coal, responsible for almost 8% of the coal mined by this method in 2011.

Most encouragingly, along with its commitment to end large scale surface mining in the region, Patriot also acknowledged the impact this destructive form of mining has on local communities and announced its commitment to reduce its environmental footprint.

Patriot issued the following statement:

Patriot Coal has concluded that the continuation or expansion of surface mining, particularly large-scale surface mining of the type common in central Appalachia, is not in its long-term interests. Today’s proposed settlement commits Patriot Coal to phase out and permanently exit large scale surface mining and transition our business primarily toward underground mining and related small scale surface mining.

Patriot Coal recognizes that our mining operations impact the communities in which we operate in significant ways, and we are committed to maximizing the benefits of this agreement for our stakeholders, including our employees and neighbors. We believe the proposed settlement will result in a reduction of our environmental footprint.

While this may sound like a change of heart, it is worth noting that Patriot was facing some tough economic challenges. The company had filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in June and was being sued by environmental and citizens’ groups in West Virginia federal court to stop polluting water with selenium, a metal released by large-scale strip mining, and clean up the pollution.

Whatever their motivation, this news is a win for the mountains and communities of Appalachia.

Grim, but not surprising.

Of the 378 coal plants across the country, 75 are considered to be the most toxic and receive an “F” on the report’s environmental justice report card. Four million people live within three miles of those plants. In fact, some 78 percent of African-Americans live within 30 miles of a coal-fired power plant.

The report investigates the overall toxicity of emissions, or “dirtiness,” of America’s coal plants, and combines these emissions ratings with demographic data to rank a coal plant’s effect on neighboring communities. It looks at race, income and population density when looking at the dirtiest coal plants.

Climate justice is the intersection between climate change, fossil fuel extraction and combustion, and social justice. It’s the point where low-income communities and communities of color are disproportionately impacted by these environmental and climate catastrophes.

“Coal pollution is literally killing low-income communities and communities of color,” stated NAACP President and CEO Benjamin Todd Jealous, who added that it is an issue of environmental justice.

“There is no disputing the urgency of this issue. Environmental justice is a civil and human rights issue when our children are getting sick, our grandparents are dying early, and mothers and fathers are missing work,” stated Jealous.

The report is a combined effort of the NAACP, the Indigenous Environmental Network and the Little Village Environmental Justice Organization.

Read the full report here.

The day ended with nine arrests, a swarm of media attention and hundreds of people showing their support with phone calls directly to key decision makers at Bank of America.

Today’s inspiring and complex action was deployed seamlessly by a passionate and peaceful crew of activists determined to send BofA a loud and clear message that the bank bears responsibility for the disastrous impacts of its coal funding. Coal is the largest source of climate change pollution in the U.S., and a major cause of air pollution and asthma.

Local grandmothers Patricia Moore and Beth Henry were among those arrested today after locking themselves to 55-gallon barrels in front of an Uptown Charlotte BofA branch. Pat spoke to the gathering crowd with dignity and deep emotion about her concern for her granddaughter who suffers from chronic asthma after growing up in close proximity to five coal-fired power plants that surround the city of Charlotte.

As fire engines roared into place and police and television helicopters gathered overhead, protest particpants—residents of Charlotte, Asheville, West Virginia and beyond—sat firm, blockading the doors of BofA’s bank branches to calmly but firmly make their case to the media and bank employees.

Some of today’s arrestees live in communities directly impacted by the devastating practice of mountaintop removal coal mining in Appalachia. Others pointed to the massive damage recently caused by super storm Sandy as urgent evidence that climate change is already directly affecting our lives and time is running out to take action for future generations.

Today’s action showed that standing up to protect our families, our homes, our climate requires bold acts. What we saw today was a group of people from wide ranging backgrounds come together to use the power of creative innovation and dignified resistance–what we saw, was a group of nine people able to get the attention of one of the world’s largest banks.

You can join those in Charlotte by calling Bank of America right now.

Thank you to all of those who put their bodies on the line today to ring the alarm bell that BofA must change its ways for the sake of us all and future generations. It is time for BofA to realize that the climate movement is only growing. More and more people of conscience will be inspired to take action until the bank stops funding dirty and dangerous coal and starts funding a clean energy future.

Today in Charlotte, NC., nine people are risking arrest at sit-ins coordinated at four different Bank of America branches. Among those risking arrest is Patricia Moore, 75, of Charlotte, a Bank of America family shareholder and grandmother concerned about the impact coal pollution is having on her granddaughter, Kate, who suffers from chronic asthma.

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Seated with her arm locked into a 55-gallon barrel, Moore was asked why she is participating in today’s action:

Most of the members of my family live within the ring of five coal plans that surround our city. When Bank of America funds coal, it sponsors the coal pollution that’s hurting my family. This bank invests billions into the coal industry every year, locking us into more pollution than we can afford. We stand together today as people who understand the many problems that stem from coal. We are committed to building a healthier world for future generations.

In the past two years, Bloomberg data indicates that Bank of America has invested $6.4 billion in the U.S. coal industry, surpassing any other American financial institution. Also according to Bloomberg Data, the bank is the top funder of companies that practice mountaintop removal coal mining in Appalachia. The bank underwrites the entire spectrum of the coal industry, from mining, to transport, to the utilities that operate the dirtiest coal-fired power plants.

Moore has spent the last month protesting BofA’s financial relationship to the coal industry, starting with an ad (one in a series coordinated by RAN) featuring her and her granddaughter that ran in the Charlotte Business Journal.

According to a 2010 Clean Air Task Force study, 325 deaths, 502 heart attacks and 5,490 asthma attacks are attributed to the five coal plants within 50 miles of Charlotte. Nationally, coal is a leading cause of life-threatening air pollution like asthma-inducing smog.

Last week Pat wrote an email to RAN supporters calling on all of us to help her send a message to BofA. This is what she said:

Can you imagine watching your granddaughter struggle daily to breathe? It is hard to think of breathing as a luxury—but for my granddaughter that is her constant reality. Our family lives in Charlotte, which is one of the smoggiest cities in the country, largely because of its close proximity to dirty coal-fired plants. In the five generations my family has lived here in Charlotte, North Carolina, never has there been an issue more serious than the air we breathe. Bank of America, the #1 underwriter of the U.S. coal industry, should not be contributing to devastating people’s health.

Terms like “bad air days,” “extreme weather,” or “climate change” may feel vague or far away to some. But behind these words there are people like me and my granddaughter. People whose lives are imperiled by coal companies and the financial institutions that back them. They think we haven’t noticed.

But the world is starting to wake up. And we have an opportunity. This is our time to tell Bank of America to stop funding coal and start the transition to a clean energy future today. Because energy should not cost lives.