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.”

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?

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.

A Guest blog-post by Yann Louvel, BankTrack‘s Climate and Energy Campaign Coordinator

This week, Bloomberg published the results of its third annual ranking of the “world’s greenest banks”: Citi was ranked first, followed by Santander and JPMorgan. The study assesses banks based on their lending to clean-energy projects and reduction in their own power consumption and carbon footprints. However, banks’ support for dirty energy, such as fossil fuel and nuclear power, is notably absent from Bloomberg’s methodology. When the value of banks’ finance for fossil fuels so often dwarfs their investments in renewables, Bloomberg’s data does not even tell half of the story.

Measuring the Good, Ignoring the Bad

One question mark over Bloomberg’s ranking is its definition of “clean energy”, and in particular its inclusion of hydropower (including large environmentally and socially destructive dam projects) and biomass/biofuels in this definition.

But the fundamental problem with its approach lies in the complete omission of banks’ investments in fossil fuels and nuclear energy.  While banks’ growing investments in green energy are to be welcomed, it is even more crucial that investments in fossil fuels drop drastically in the coming years if we are to have a chance of avoiding catastrophic global warming. The ratio of green to “brown” investments would provide a meaningful study on the level of “greenness” of a bank, but looking at clean investments alone makes this little more than a PR exercise for the banking sector.

To give a concrete example of this problem, BankTrack, together with urgewald, Groundwork and Earthlife Africa, released the “Bankrolling Climate Change” report in Durban in 2011. The report is an investigation into the coal investments of the world’s leading banks. We looked at the funding of 93 international banks in 71 coal companies between 2005 and 2011 to identify the “top 20 climate killer banks” in the world. The results show a significant overlap between Bloomberg’s “world’s greenest banks” and the top 20 climate killer banks. In fact, seven of Bloomberg’s top ten appear in the “Climate Killer” list.

Citi, which tops Bloomberg’s list, was rated the number two climate killer bank, and JPMorgan, our number one climate killer bank, is Bloomberg’s number three. Citi’s investments in the coal industry grew by 40% between 2005 and 2010 as the bank poured more than €13 billion into the coal industry. Citi’s profile on the BankTrack website links the bank to the controversial Keystone XL tar sands pipeline, as well as mountaintop removal coal mining and the controversial Alpha Coal project in Australia, expected to directly and negatively impact the Great Barrier Reef. This makes the “Greenest Bank in the World” tag a little hard to swallow.

Environmental Direct-Impact, Back to Sustainability Pre-History

Another disturbing aspect of Bloomberg’s methodology is that “reductions in air emissions and water use and gains in energy efficiency” account for a full 30 percent of the score. These are banks’ “direct” impacts, e.g. their own use of energy for electricity and office heating. If this approach would have been understandable in the 1990s, it seems extremely dated in 2013, to say the least.

Numerous studies, particularly from NGOs including many from BankTrack members and partners in the past few years, have clearly demonstrated that banks’ primary environmental impacts are result from their core activities – their lending and investments – rather than through their “direct” impacts. While the sustainability debate in the banking sector started ten or twenty years ago with these direct impacts, the trend since then has been towards looking at the issues that matter: the impacts of banks’ finance. Methodologies for measuring these ‘financed emissions’ already exist, and BankTrack has long called on banks to report on these impacts systematically.

Management and reduction of direct impacts should be considered a ‘hygiene factor’ for banks, rather than a core issue. When Bloomberg reports that JPMorgan, which invested more than €16 billion in the coal industry between 2005 and 2011, “revamped its Park Avenue headquarters in New York, where energy-saving lights now dim automatically and a 54,000-gallon basement tank collects rain for flushing toilets and watering plants”, one has to wonder if it is looking down its telescope backwards.

Stop The Greenwashing

By avoiding mention of fossil fuels and nuclear energy, and by giving undue weight to banks’ direct impacts, Bloomberg’s “greenest banks” methodology is fundamentally, and it would seem deliberately, flawed. (BankTrack and partners Rainforest Action Network and urgewald already raised these concerns in a letter to Bloomberg last year).

The results of this study will now be used by the “world’s greenest banks” in their marketing and public relations material – a generous but undeserved gift to banks which are ploughing billions into environmentally destructive projects. This is a shame when there remain plenty of opportunities for Bloomberg, banks, analysts and other stakeholders to examine bank’s investments in fossil fuels, nuclear power, and their financed emissions. BankTrack will continue to denounce such greenwashing exercises in the coming months and years.

Over the past few months, Bostonians have demonstrated their concern about the impacts coal has on our communities, health, and economy. BofA treats customers poorly, charges higher fees more often, and likes to foreclose on American families while it repeatedly gets bailed out. In turn, it helps big coal companies like Alpha Natural Resources bail out negligent corporations like Massey Energy, which faced bankruptcy in 2011 after the worst U.S. mining disaster since 1970.

BofA gives the coal industry as a whole several billion dollars in financing each year–while championing 10 billion dollars over a 20 year investment period in largely undisclosed “green initiatives.” It continues to fund the mountaintop removal coal mining that destroys communities and ecosystems, the coal-fired power plants making families sick, and the coal export terminal development that would condemn already overburdened communities to another century of dirty energy infrastructure. Nobody is surprised.

In January activists, organizers, researchers, students, and scholars gathered to discuss Banks, Climate Justice and the Green Economy and BofA’s leading role in the extraction, transport, and burning of coal. In February we came together again in greater numbers and featured local musicians, justice activists, financial advisors, and film makers to dig deeper into BofA’s dirty truth: disregard for our clean energy, green jobs, affordable housing, and quality of life needs. Then last Wednesday, a small but mighty delegation delivered a demand letter to the bank that has been circulating all the while.

In a clear show of respect for RAN and our allies, a notable representative of distinct influence in the bank received our delivery, listened to statements from the two asset managers, the rabbi and the philanthropist in our group, and promised to pass the letter on to its intended recipient, CEO Brian Moynihan. Fifty people from a wide range of distinguished backgrounds had signed on to the letter asking BofA to phase out its funding of coal energy and redirect financing into cleaner, greener energy infrastructure. The icing on the cake was walking out to a larger group of justice allies protesting outside, calling the bank out and putting Boston on the NoCoalBofA map with Charlotte and the Bay Area.

Some of the people who signed may be familiar to you already: Noam Chomsky, Sut Jhally, and Bill McKibben. But who knew that we would receive such support from investment firms, 19 in all? All those who backed this letter understand that the true cost of coal comes on the backs of people who live near the plants, near the mines, and near the railroads that deliver toxic dust clouds over school yards. When these industry leaders come together with community activists to urge the bank to shift its financing, we CAN cut the cash that fuels the industry killing communities and infuse the renewable energy market with increased cash flow.

RAN is part of a growing culture of fossil fuel resistance taking shape in Boston, one that complements and connects with existing resistance power bases here. From campus divestment and keystone pipeline action, to faith community summits and the working groups of 350 Massachusetts, people are rising up and teaming up. They’re linking the dominant energy infrastructure to the struggles of low-income communities and communities of color. Add to this the collaborative progress of the Coal Free Mass coalition in coal plant host communities, the creative persistence of national housing justice leaders at City Life/Vida Urbana and very much alive and networked Occupy affinity groups, and you get a sense of the concurrent activity on the ground to kick our dirty energy habit and manifest climate justice.

A friend recently noted we should thank BofA for being the bank everyone loves to hate, uniting too often divergent movements around a common target. It’s a testament to our movement that people apply their unique experience and knowledge to win these shared fights. This is the network that defines the heart—and muscle—of everything we do at RAN. Whether its people protesting on the street, taking an online action, supporting groups we believe in or signing onto a letter, we are ensuring that our chorus does more than preach—it sings.

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.

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.

Banks emit greenhouse gases to power their offices and branches, but they also finance the emissions of other companies through their loans, investments, and other financial services. Our best estimates indicate that these “financed emissions” dwarf a bank’s emissions from other sources, yet banks currently lack the tools to measure this critical but overlooked component of a bank’s greenhouse gas footprint.

Time is Running out to Reduce Bank Carbon Footprints

In a report released by Rainforest Action Network’s Energy and Finance Program today, “Bankrolling Climate Disruption: The Impacts of the Banking Sector’s Financed Emissions” (PDF), we analyze the consequences of financed emissions for the climate and the risks they pose for banks.

Rising concentrations of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere have begun to disrupt the global climate, triggering extreme weather events around the globe in recent years. To address this growing climate crisis, the global economy must rapidly transition to low-carbon energy sources. This transition poses major challenges for the banking sector, which will need to shift its financing from fossil fuel-based power sources to low-carbon energy infrastructure.

To date, major global banks have been moving in the wrong direction on climate. A report by the BankTrack network of NGOs (PDF) found that the world’s 93 largest banks’ financial commitments to coal mining and coal-fired power generation nearly doubled between 2005 and 2010. Unfortunately, time is running out for banks to decarbonize their financing portfolios. By the end of the decade, locked-in emissions from new infrastructure will make it impossible to limit atmospheric CO₂ concentrations below the critical threshold of 450 parts per million, making catastrophic climate change inevitable.

In addition to putting the global climate at risk, a bank’s financed emissions also expose it to reputational risks from an increasingly climate-aware public. Over the long term, banks that fail to measure and reduce their financed emissions will face financial risks from their financing relationships with coal-fired utilities, oil and gas producers, and other companies that face an uncertain future in a carbon-constrained economy.

New Tools for Measuring Financed Emissions

Fortunately, the Greenhouse Gas Protocol has developed new guidelines for calculating financed emissions that provide key tools for banks to measure their financed emissions footprints. And public sector institutions such as the U.S. Overseas Private Investment Corporation have already led the way for their private sector counterparts by setting targets to reduce emissions from their financing portfolios.

Major U.S. banks have taken some positive steps on climate change, such as committing over $100 billion in loans and investments to environmentally beneficial projects over the next decade. However, banks have not actually measured the net greenhouse gas impacts achieved by these commitments. To differentiate themselves from their peers and demonstrate that these green financing is having an impact, banks must measure the bottom-line climate outcomes of both their environmental lending initiatives and their broader financing portfolio.

Next Steps for Banks

RAN’s report recommends that banks participate in an upcoming multi-stakeholder initiative coordinated by the Greenhouse Gas Protocol to finalize tools for banks to measure the climate impacts of their financing activities. In addition to participating, banks should also set aggressive reduction targets for their financed emissions to align with the 450 ppm greenhouse gas stabilization target.

Could banks put these recommendations into practice quickly enough to make a difference for the climate? Let’s hope so. The report’s recommended financed emissions reduction trajectory for banks represents the minimum reductions necessary to align banks with an emissions trajectory that will stay within the world’s dwindling budget of carbon that can safely be emitted through mid-century.

As Bill McKibben, the Carbon Tracker Initiative, and others have noted, this global carbon budget leaves precious little room for error if the world is to avert catastrophic climate change, making it incumbent on banks to address their financed emissions as soon as possible.

This week kicked off with BofA VP of small business banking Lance Easley, who also happens to be a replacement referee for the NFL, making the infamous call that handed the Seattle Seahawks a victory over the Green Bay Packers on Monday Night Football—what some are calling “the worst call ever.” And it didn’t get any better from there—though things were already not exactly going BofA’s way.

Here, in no certain order, is how the past couple of weeks have played out for Bank of America:

• The fallout continued following BofA’s announcement late last week that it would be cutting 16,000 jobs by year’s end. This puts the bank nearly a year ahead of schedule in its plan to cut some 30,000 jobs over the next few years, the largest US job cuts announced in all of 2011.
• The National Fair Housing Alliance (NFHA) and five of its member organizations filed a complaint with the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development accusing BofA of bias in the maintenance and marketing of foreclosed homes in minority neighborhoods. After evaluating 373 properties, NFHA concluded that foreclosed homes in predominantly white neighborhoods were in much better condition than empty homes in minority neighborhoods, in violation of the Fair Housing Act.
• Millions of Bank of America customers were reportedly unable to access their accounts online this week as BofA continued to be targeted by a string of cyberattacks.
• News just broke today that Bank of America will have to pay $2.43 billion to settle a class-action lawsuit filed by investors over misleading claims made by BofA officials during the acquisition of Merrill Lynch. BofA shareholders say bank officials “made false or misleading statements about both companies’ financial health” when they announced the $20 billion deal to acquire Merrill in 2008, at the height of the financial crisis (in fact, the deal was announced the same weekend that Lehman Brothers went belly up). Investors realized they’d been duped when BofA announced Merrill would post $27.6 billion in losses later that same year. Bank of America ended up having to borrow another $20 billion on top of the $25 billion it had already borrowed from you and me, the taxpayers, to get out of its financial mess.

As you can see, BofA seems to be making a lot of bad calls these days, and, unfortunately, the majority of them are not happening on the gridiron. (Okay so the cyberattacks may not exactly be Bank of America’s fault, except for the fact that BofA is one big shining symbol of everything predatory and self-serving about Wall Street.)

Oh and if all that wasn’t enough, Bank of America still hasn’t fixed its coal problem. That’s your worst call yet, BofA. Get with it.

Unfortunately, the report doesn’t offer any clues, as it makes no mention of BofA’s coal financing, the immense, dirty, unsustainable elephant in the room.

BofA exec Andrew Plepler hosted a “Twitter chat”—whatever the hell that is—to discuss the report. It was almost like BofA decided to hold its press conference right here in our office. Given the glaring omission (and emissions) of BofA’s coal financing, the bank’s attempts to highlight its social responsibility are nothing but greenwash. And Twitter let Plepler know it.

Here is the whole chat, in all its dubious glory. I counted two, maybe three people actually trying to ask Plepler about his bank’s CSR initiatives. The rest of the 100+ tweets are by activists wanting to know how BofA can claim to be a responsible corporate citizen while propping up the dirty and outdated coal industry. For brevity’s sake, not all retweets are included here, though I included several at the end just to show that even after Plepler tried to shut the conversation down, it just kept growing.

Thanks to everyone who participated in BofA’s first—and I’m going to go out on a limb here and say last—Twitter chat today.

]]> http://understory.ran.org/2012/08/15/bank-of-americas-greenwash-doesnt-fly-on-twitter/feed/ 0 http://understory.ran.org/2012/08/15/bank-of-americas-new-report-touts-green-image-downplays-dirty-emissions/ http://understory.ran.org/2012/08/15/bank-of-americas-new-report-touts-green-image-downplays-dirty-emissions/#comments Wed, 15 Aug 2012 14:18:00 +0000 Amanda Starbuck http://understory.ran.org/?p=19334 This morning Bank of America rolled out its annual Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) report, which proudly promotes the company’s commitment to greening their public image but fails to address its biggest environmental impact: financing the coal industry.

Bank of America wants to have it both ways: The bank wants to appear as a responsible corporate actor, but still benefit from destructive coal mining and coal-fired utilities. Its CSR report reeks of hypocrisy as it profits at the expense of communities and our environment while also identifying itself as a climate champion.

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Bank of America claims to be “working to finance the transition to a lower-carbon future”, yet commitments to renewable energy and energy efficiency only make progress towards greening its own image. To stem the impending climate crisis, however, the burning of coal must be phased out of the U.S. energy grid.

According to its CSR report, Bank of America acknowledges the impact of these investments by reporting on emissions of utilities in its lending portfolio. However, the bank’s reporting methodology is flawed and non-transparent. As it has in the past, the bank only reports on emissions from 75% of its utility portfolio, providing an incomplete assessment of emissions associated with the bank’s lending activities. Without full disclosure, it remains unclear whether the bank is actually shifting its lending away from the most coal-intensive utilities or whether the bank’s lending practices have lagged a national shift away from coal-fired power generation and towards cleaner alternatives.

Bank of America’s Environmental Business Initiative, while a step in the right direction, is insufficient to offset the environmental damage caused by its lending practices. The $3.65 billion lending component of BofA’s 2011 commitment represents less than half a percent of the bank’s total loans and leases as of December 2011 ($926 billion). In contrast, the bank charged off more than five times as much in bad debt during 2011 ($20.8 billion). Were the bank to offset the emissions from its utility portfolio in 2011, we estimate that the cost would far exceed this $3.65 billion amount.

This report fails to address Bank of America’s position as the number one underwriter of the coal mining industry or report plans for reducing fossil fuel investments. In fact, the record shows increases in spending. In 2010 and 2011, Bank of America provided $6.4 billion in underwriting for U.S. coal.

Bank of America has its hands in a dirty business, where the drive for profit outweighs consequences like human and environmental catastrophes associated with climate change. The bank is the largest financier of the coal industry in the U.S., and funds every stage of coal’s life cycle­. It spends billions each year underwriting destructive mountaintop removal mining and utilities that operate coal-burning power plants.

It’s time for Bank of America to phase out funding for the coal industry. The impacts on the climate and public health make it a dangerous investment. Bank of America’s best course forward would be to end its investment in fossil fuels.

Check out this video of people who traveled to Bank of America’s annual shareholder meeting to explain to the bank the impacts of its financing of the coal industry in their communities:

Yesterday, my colleague Scott wrote about the focus of this protest: the Otter Creek Mine in Montana’s Powder River Basin.

As with so many issues that RAN works on, money is the motivating factor that is driving mining giant Arch Coal to exploit these beautiful, wild lands. Arch is gambling that a future market in coal exports from the Pacific North West coast will bring in some big returns.

Follow the money, and you’ll find some familiar players. Arch Coal is being underwritten by Bank of America, Citi, Morgan Stanley and PNC. These banks – who have all publicly expressed concern for the climate – arranged a $2 billion credit line for Arch in May of this year and a further $1 billion bond in June.

At a time when coal companies are reporting significant losses, it is the financial lifeline provided by these banks that enables Arch to drive forward their plans for new mines, such as Otter Creek and for new coal export terminals, while writing a suicide note for our planet and climate.

This year, as the bankers hopped on their bikes, they rode alongside team Roll Against Coal!, an intrepid group of Charlotte-based RAN members out to raise public awareness of coal pollution and money for cancer research at the same time.

Long outdoor bike rides are often hazardous to the health of Charlotte residents, thanks in large part to air pollution from four coal-fired power plants that ring the city.  Last year, coal-fired power plant pollution contributed to 24 bad air days that endangered Charlotte’s children, the elderly, and neighbors with asthma.  Our team of biking activists carried this truth onto the bike route, with decorated bikes and tunics reading

Roll Against Coal! and emblazoned with a heart and lungs graphic.

As the field of cyclists zipped around the three-mile route, many stopped for refreshments at RAN’s lemonade stand, where we were happy to serve up some coal-free lemonade (99% juice!) with a side of truth.  Over a hundred cyclists stopped to talk with us about coal’s assault on public health, from air pollution in Charlotte, to cancer rates that are twice the national average in the moutaintop removal coalfields of Appalachia.

Upon learning that Bank of America is the leading funder of coal pollution in the United States, dozens of doctors, surgeons, and even Bank of America employees signed letters to the bank’s CEO Brian Moynihan, calling for an end to coal funding.  Every cyclist we spoke to agreed: instead of financing the coal industry to pollute air and water near mine-sites and coal plants across the country, it is time that Bank of America prioritize health and clean, renewable energy investments.  To make sure Bank of America got the message, our team delivered letters to several bank executives who were present at the bike ride.

We believe that all people deserve clean air, clean water, and healthy lives.  If our society is ever to end cancer and truly safeguard public health, we have to end our dependence on dirty and dangerous energy.  It is time for Bank of America to stop funding coal’s cancer and aggressively fund the renewable energy cure.

Just two months after we renamed it “Bank of Coal” Stadium to point out that BofA is still the #1 financier of the US coal industry, Democrat Party leaders have dubbed Bank of America Stadium “Panthers Stadium”.

Here’s a photo of Nancy Pelosi and Barack Obama scaling the sides of BofA Stadium to hang a banner announcing the new name, “Panthers Stadium”, just like our activists did back in May.*

Politico reports:

National Democrats have repeatedly touted their stand against taking corporate money for their convention in September, and so it was striking to see two emails from the DNC host committee referring to the Charlotte venue where President Obama will speak as “Panthers Stadium.”

It’s the place where the Panthers play, but it’s actually called Bank of America stadium.

It’s pretty easy to see why the Democrats wouldn’t want to be associated with Bank of America, which is still very much one of the least trusted names in America. President Obama is supposed to accept the party’s nomination at BofA Stadium at the end of the Democratic National Convention.

I guess Obama has decided that he already has enough problems to deal with thanks to Bank of America: millions of Americans kicked out of their homes, poisoned by coal-burning power plants, and fired from their jobs — all thanks to the reckless, greedy behavior of Bank of America and other big Wall Street banks.

* This is a Photoshop job. To the best of our knowledge, Nancy and Barack do not climb.

As executives in Rio worked to promote BofA’s latest greenwash, the ironies of the bank’s grand environmental announcement were on full display outside corporate headquarters in Charlotte. On Thursday, concerned local citizens dumped 500 pounds of dirty coal in front of the bank’s tower to mark the third consecutive day of dangerously polluted Charlotte air. Bucket by bucket, coal rained down, eventually covering a large banner reading “Bank of America’s Environmental Policy.” As black clouds of coal dust billowed, activists and media alike donned respiratory masks.

The message we sent to the BofA execs inside their ivory tower was clear: Paying for coal’s assault on climate stability and public health is an odd way to demonstrate environmental commitment.

Thanks in large part to Bank of America’s investment in the coal industry, Charlotte residents frequently breathe air so polluted that it is unsafe for children, elderly, folks with asthma, or even for general outdoor exercise. This summer, we’re fighting back and holding Bank of America accountable. Charlotte activists will be taking action every day our air is dangerous. (In 2011, there were 24 such days.)

So long as Bank of America is committed to funding coal, it remains committed to sponsoring global climate change, air pollution, and asthma in communities like Charlotte. In the context of billions for dirty coal, “the Bank of America funding of solar energy is like pouring a teaspoon of water on a fire with one hand while pouring a gallon of gasoline on that fire with the other,” said local mother Beth Henry.  She punctuated her statement by dumping a heaping bucket of coal outside the bank’s doors.

Until Bank of America is ready to stop funding bad air and climate change, its environmental commitments are nothing more than pretensions. So far, Bank of America hasn’t demonstrated a willingness to clean up its coal mess. After dumping our coal in Charlotte this Thursday, we gave the bank a demonstration in responsibility we hope it will put to use: we rolled up our sleeves and went to work. We didn’t stop until the coal was gone.

One of these is the ‘Natural Capital Declaration‘ (NCD), launched on Saturday by more than 35 financial institutions. They claim that this marks the first time the world of finance explicitly has made the protection and preservation of natural ecosystems a priority for CEO-level consideration and action.

RAN has been campaigning for many years for the financial sector to take serious responsibility for the impacts on critical ecosystems caused by the corporations, projects and industries that it underwrites. However, we have some big concerns about the NCD…

BankTrack (a network that RAN is a member of) put out the following response statement, which we agree with:

BankTrack welcomes any initiative by the financial sector that unequivocally acknowledges the inherent value of nature, as well as the limits posed to their business activities by the environmental carrying capacity of the earth. We equally welcome any sufficiently ambitious, credible initiative of the sector to factor this fundamental recognition into their business and investment decisions.

BankTrack considers the Natural Capital Declaration not such an initiative, but a false and disturbing response of the financial sector to the profound ecological crises of today. It is based upon a fatally flawed understanding of the root causes of these crises (imperfect valuation of ‘Natural Capital and Ecosystem Services’) and proposes an equally flawed solution to them (proper pricing).

The Declaration claims the fundamental right of business, and the adopting institutions in particular, to enter every realm of nature and the environment and to identify, price and subsequently market whatever ‘stock’ and ‘service’ can be identified there, under the pretext that this commodification process will help end the ongoing plunder and exploitation of nature. As such, the Declaration is another attempt to promote the liberal, market based ‘green economy’ model sought by business as outcome of the Rio conference.

BankTrack believes that the manifold ecological crises need a wholly different response: instead of expanding the scope of markets to every domain of nature, creating a true green economy would start from the opposite; reversing the tide of commodification and financialization, reducing the role of markets and the financial sector, acknowledging the limits of business versus other spheres of life, and recognizing the collective responsibility of all people for, and strengthening the democratic control over the worlds’ ecological commons. Rather than a Natural Capital Declaration we need more Nature without Capital.

Instead of launching a vaguely worded voluntary initiative with no immediate discernible impact on everyday investment decisions, we call upon the financial sector to withdraw itself from where it has no rightful place, to adopt strict no-go standards for all business activities that wreak havoc upon nature, climate, the environment and people, and to throw its full weight behind those sectors and initiatives that help preserve, protect and restore the life giving capacity of the earth.

via the unfoundation

As governmental negotiations are faltering at the “Rio Plus 20” talks in Brazil, the Sustainable Energy for All initiative (SE4All) announced major commitments to sustainable energy from a wide variety of stakeholders, including developing nation governments, corporations and the rock band Linkin Park.

Co-Chaired by Bank of America Chairman Chad Holliday, SE4All announced that Ghana would develop a national energy action plan that “to support capacity-development and innovative financing mechanisms.” Barbados plans to increase its use of renewable energy to 29%. Meanwhile, members of Linkin Park launched the “Power the World” campaign, which aims to deliver one million signatures to world leaders at Rio+20 urging an end to energy poverty.

In SE4All’s press release Holliday says:

I believe this initiative is one of the great opportunities of our time. It provides solutions for some of the toughest global challenges we face — poverty, inequality, energy security, climate change and environmental protection. These commitments demonstrate that we can make tremendous progress when all key stakeholders — developed and developing countries, private companies and civil society groups — work together in common cause for the common good.

Sustainable Energy For All Co-Chairs Chad Holliday & Kandeh Yumkella

But as Holliday helps move Ghana and Barbados towards a clean energy grid, the company he guides through these tumultuous economic and environmental times, Bank of America, remains the largest funder of coal in the United States. The United States maintains one of the largest carbon footprints on the planet with more than 35% of the U.S. electricity grid powered by coal.

Bank of America finances some of the worst coal mining companies responsible for ecological crimes upon the mountains and people of Appalachia. The bank is a top financier for the world’s largest coal companies who are now developing mega-terminals in the Pacific Northwest to stem floundering profits by shipping Powder River Basin coal overseas to Asian markets.

Can someone let me know where Bank of America’s investment portfolio falls into the framework of “Sustainable Energy for All?”

Bank of America is responsible for some of the worst existing and emerging environmental catastrophes on the planet. But as SE4All moves forward with clean energy and sustainability commitments to many parts of the world, we’ve yet to see a real commitment to reducing the carbon footprint of Bank of America’s investment portfolio.

While the bank’s initiative focuses on its financing of renewable energy, key construction projects and reduction of its own operational emissions (emissions from its buildings and facilities), the bank makes no mention of its role in financing fossil fuels, like coal, which are the leading cause of climate emissions in the United States.

Plain and simple, increasing support for renewable energy and not decreasing funding for coal will not do what’s needed to reduce emissions or protect the climate.

Bank of America’s commitment to renewable energy is a step in the right direction for our climate, however, the bank is simultaneously taking two steps back by continuing to underwrite the coal industry. The bottom line is we cannot reduce the emissions necessary to stem climate change with renewable energy funding alone, we must also curb our use of coal and Bank of America’s new environmental commitment makes no move to do that.

Coal is the elephant in Bank of America’s record. Bank of America boasts about increasing its commitments to renewable energy, but omits reporting its steadily increasing financing for coal—the number one source of U.S. climate pollution. Between 2010 and 2011, Bank of America provided more than $6.4 billion in underwriting for U.S. coal.

Bank of America finances climate and community pollution at every stage in the coal industry. It spends billions each year underwriting mountaintop removal coal mining companies and utilities that operate the dirtiest coal-burning power plants in the country.

Check out our video of people who traveled to Bank of America’s 2012 shareholder meeting to explain to the bank what impact their underwriting is having on local communities across the U.S.

If Bank of America wishes for a true legacy of environmental leadership, then it is clearly time to update its position on coal. Coal’s devastating impact on both climate and public health comes at a time when the profitability of both coal mining and coal-fired power generation is way down and presenting a clear financial risk for the bank.