Martin Mudd is an anti-strip mining activist who manages a Facebook group asking that JP Morgan Chase stop financing mountaintop removal. Members of Martin’s group closed their accounts with Chase today in protest of the company’s continued financing of MTR. Last week, JP Morgan Chase executive, Jim Fuschetti, sent a letter to Martin Mudd, [...]

After more than a year of denial, RBC may be admitting that it has a problem in the tar sands. Tomorrow, we’ve learned that RBC will host a group of more than a dozen international banks for what it calls a “day of learning”. The meeting comes just eight weeks after our letter to 68 [...]

As an ode to the  “rank ‘em and spank ‘em” strategy coined by our outgoing Executive Director Mike Brune, we proudly present the following roster of international banks backing expansion in the tar sands. The table below is based on credit extended to companies operating in the tar sands backed by each bank since 2007 according [...]

Take action today and demand that the EPA regulate coal ash and other coal combustion wastes as a hazardous waste under the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (RCRA). The Tennessee Valley Authority’s (TVA) devastating coal ash slurry spill in Eastern Tennessee was just over a year ago. Take action with the Waterkeeper Alliance and pressure the [...]

Listening to the Obama’s State of the Union address last night, I was encouraged to hear that job creation is the President’s number one priority for 2010. Well, here is some required reading for achieving that aim: last week’s report from Downstream Strategies in Morgantown, WV: “The Decline of Central Appalachian Coal and the Need for Economic [...]

An article from Patricia Best in this week’s Macleans magazine offers a peek into how RBC is responding to RAN’s campaign. Here’s a peek into how RAN is responding to RBC. But first a note to set the record straight. RBC Spokeswoman Katherine Gay claims in the Macleans article that our research into RBC financing activity [...]

The latest from yesterday’s protests at the Carbon Trading Summit in New York City: 1/13/2009 – New York, NY – In the wake of a controversial outcome at the Copenhagen climate talks, a diverse crowd of scientists, Faith congregations, activists, students, and concerned citizens converged in confrontation and protest at the 2nd Annual IGlobalForum Carbon Trading [...]

Over the past few weeks, several RAN members and activists have forwarded me emails received from James Fuschetti, Managing Director of the Office of Environmental Affairs at JPMC. In his emails to RAN activists, Fuchetti claims that JPMorgan’s “financing in this industry [coal and mtr] are quite small,” and disputes JPMorgan Chase’s relationship with [...]

As negotiations wrapped up in Barcelona at the UN Climate Talks, the opportunity for a robust agreement to reduce emissions from deforestation and degradation in developing countries (REDD) is dangling from a wire. The latest negotiating text, which parties will be working on at the opening of the Copenhagen UNFCCC COP15, contains no provisions to [...]

There has been a lot of grassroots pressure on the EPA in the last few weeks on the issue of Mountaintop Removal. Last Friday I was able to meet a new coalition of youth activists in Philly that has emerged when they were speaking out at the Region 3 EPA headquarters. The group, Philadelphia Coalition Against [...]