Climate Activists Target Banks' Greenwashing in Nationwide #DefundLine3 Protests

In the wake of this week's publication of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report underscoring the imperative to quickly transition to a post-fossil fuel economy, activists in dozens of cities across the U.S. on Friday rallied outside the offices of major banks to denounce their funding of polluting projects including Enbridge's Line 3 tar sands pipeline.

"You can't build pipelines and be sustainable."
--Stop the Money Pipeline

The activists targeted companies including BlackRock, JPMorgan Chase, and Liberty Mutual, which invest in, fund, and insure fossil fuel industry projects like Line 3.

"On Monday, the IPCC released its first comprehensive study on the climate crisis since 2013. Hundreds of climate scientists collaborated on the report, synthesizing the findings of more than 14,000 studies," Stop the Money Pipeline--a coalition of over 150 groups whose mission is "holding the financial backers of climate chaos accountable"--said in a statement.

"The conclusions were clear: We must immediately phase out fossil fuels," the group continued. "The United Nations Secretary-General, Antonio Guterres, summed it up: 'This report must sound a death knell for coal and fossil fuels, before they destroy our planet.' Yet, Wall Street banks are continuing to fund massive new oil pipelines like Line 3 that would lock in vast amounts of climate pollution for decades. Even worse, they are disguising their loans as 'sustainability' measures.'"

"You can't build pipelines and be sustainable," Stop the Money Pipeline said in a tweet decrying greenwashing by JPMorgan Chase, which provided $1.5 billion in so-called "sustainability" loans to Enbridge.

"Sustainability-linked loans sound good, but when you look more closely you'll see they're close to meaningless," Stop the Money Pipeline explained. "Enbridge's 'sustainability' loans reward the company for reducing emissions from its buildings and vehicles, but do nothing to address the oil that flows through its pipelines and is responsible for 99% of its climate pollution."

"In other words," the group said, "according to Wall Street, so long as Enbridge uses electric vehicles and solar power to build their oil pipelines, that's fine."

Jackie Fielder, communications director for the Stop the Money Pipeline coalition, told Common Dreams that "we're taking action to call out banks for supporting Enbridge's greenwashed 'sustainability bonds' while the Canadian-based oil company reimburses police for violent crackdowns on unarmed water protectors. These banks are now complicit in human rights abuses."

As Giniw Collective co-founder Tara Houska explained earlier this month:

Police officers are reimbursed for any costs associated with Enbridge Line 3 protests, and it seems like they welcome the opportunity. One police officer was actually grinning and smiling and said he had a great time and couldn't wait for us to come again. They've billed over $1.7 million to the Public Safety Escrow Trust, in which Enbridge is dumping millions of dollars to incentivize and encourage police officers to repress, suppress, surveil, and harass Indigenous people and our allies that are helping us try to stop this pipeline from happening in our treaty territory.

The Minnesota Public Utilities Commission required the trust to reimburse law enforcement when approving the project in 2018.

If built according to plan, Line 3 will carry up to 760,000 barrels of crude tar sands oil--the world's dirtiest fuel--each day from Alberta to a port in Wisconsin. The pipeline would traverse Anishinaabe treaty land without the consent of the Indigenous peoples who live there. Line 3's route would cross more than 200 bodies of water and 800 wetlands, raising serious concerns not only about its climate impact, but also about accidents and leaks that are endemic to pipelines.

State and local law enforcement officers have violently repressed #StopLine3 demonstrations in northern Minnesota while arresting hundreds of water protectors in recent months.

Meanwhile, Indigenous and green groups continue to pressure the Biden administration to honor Native American treaties and protect the environment and climate by stopping the toxic project like President Joe Biden canceled the permit for the highly controversial Keystone XL Pipeline in January.