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Wells Fargo Seeks to Profit from Climate Destruction
WASHINGTON
According to disclosures submitted to the non-profit CDP and reported yesterday by Bloomberg, Wells Fargo sees the climate crisis as an opportunity to make more money.
"Preparation for and response to climate-change induced natural disasters result in greater construction, conservation and other business activities," the bank wrote, adding that it "has the opportunity to provide financing to support these efforts."
Wells Fargo has provided billions in financing for the extreme fossil fuel projects that are driving climate change. In recent years, the bank has faced mounting pressure to pull its support for the fossil fuel industry, but has taken no action to do so and has instead doubled down on its support for the dirtiest fuels on the planet including coal and tar sands.
In response, Sierra Club Campaign Representative Ben Cushing released the following statement:
"It's despicable that Wells Fargo is seeking to profit from the destruction and suffering its own investments are helping to create. Rather than scheming about how to make more money off of the climate crisis, Wells Fargo should stop making the problem worse and divest from the dirtiest fuels on the planet."
The Sierra Club is the most enduring and influential grassroots environmental organization in the United States. We amplify the power of our 3.8 million members and supporters to defend everyone's right to a healthy world.
(415) 977-5500LATEST NEWS
‘Another Outrageous, Criminal Act’: US and Israel Bomb University Known as ‘MIT of Iran’
Iran's first vice president called the attack a new "symbol of Trump's madness and ignorance."
Apr 06, 2026
A wave of US-Israeli airstrikes on Monday hit and extensively damaged Sharif University of Technology, a leading Iranian educational institution that is widely known as "the MIT of Iran" and seen as one of the world's top engineering schools.
The attack on the Tehran university—one of dozens of education sites bombed by the US and Israel since they launched their war on Iran in late February—sparked outrage inside Iran and around the world. Mohammad Reza Aref, an engineer currently serving as Iran's first vice president, said the attack on Sharif University "is a symbol of [US President Donald] Trump's madness and ignorance."
"He fails to understand that Iran's knowledge is not embedded in concrete to be destroyed by bombs; the true fortress is the will of our professors and elites," Aref wrote. "No barbarity in history has ever been able to strip science from the Iranian people. Science is rooted in our souls, and this fortress will not crumble."
The National Iranian American Council called the bombing "another outrageous, criminal act in an illegal war."
"This was a center of learning, not a military target," the group wrote on social media, highlighting video footage showing a building in ruins. "The increasing use of the Gaza playbook in Iran is deeply disturbing and will only deepen insecurity for the US and Israel. End this war."
US Rep. Yassamin Ansari (D-Ariz.), the lone Iranian American in Congress, noted that Sharif University has "produced a huge number of engineers who’ve gone on to Silicon Valley and founded some of the most successful American tech companies."
"Why are we bombing a university in a city of 10 million people?" Ansari asked.
Another outrageous, criminal act in an illegal war: U.S.-Israeli strikes have bombed one of the world’s most prestigious universities in Sharif University of Technology in Tehran. This was a center of learning, not a military target. The increasing use of the Gaza playbook in… pic.twitter.com/GE6J8WhgMC
— NIAC (@NIACouncil) April 6, 2026
Al Jazeera's Tohid Asadi reported from Tehran that the university was "severely hit, with extensive damage reported in the compound's mosque and laboratories."
Vira Ameli, an Iranian global health researcher and lecturer at the University of Oxford, decried the US-Israeli strike on Sharif University, where she spent time as a postdoctoral fellow.
"To wake to the news of this war crime, at a distance and unable to return, is difficult to articulate," Ameli wrote. "And yet history has made one thing clear: Iran is not a country undone by bombardment."
Iranian authorities say US-Israeli attacks have hit at least 30 of the nation's universities, including the Isfahan University of Technology and the Iran University of Science and Technology. The US and Israel have justified some of the attacks by claiming the universities were involved in military-related activities.
"Would American and Israeli leaders consider their own equivalent institutions fair game? Of course not," journalist Natasha Lennard wrote in a column for The Intercept last week. "By stated US and Israeli rationale, however, were Iran able to launch airstrikes on American soil, direct ties to the U.S. and Israeli military-industrial complex would make valid targets of at least the University of California, Berkeley; the Massachusetts Institute of Technology; and Johns Hopkins University, among dozens of other schools."
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'The Agents Were Lying': ICE Exposed Yet Again by Video of Minneapolis Shooting
Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey said "bare due diligence" would have exposed ICE officers' falsehoods.
Apr 06, 2026
Video footage obtained by The New York Times has exposed lies told by two federal immigration enforcement agents about the circumstances leading up to a non-fatal shooting in Minneapolis that occurred on January 14.
According to a Monday report from the Times, the video directly contradicts claims made by US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officials that they were attacked by assailants armed with a shovel and a broom for around three minutes before the agents opened fire and wounded one of the attackers.
"Instead, the confrontation depicted in the video lasts about 12 seconds and shows two men struggling with the agent," reported the Times. "It shows no sustained attack with a shovel."
Federal prosecutors had initially pursued assault charges against Venezuelan national Julio Cesar Sosa-Celis, who was shot in the leg by the ICE officers during the January confrontation, and fellow Venezuelan national Alfredo Aljorna.
However, the government abruptly dropped charges against the two men in February, and ICE Acting Director Todd Lyons acknowledged that two federal officers appear “to have made untruthful statements” about the incident.
The Times noted that the government had access to the video of the shooting hours after it took place.
However, one source told the paper that prosecutors didn't watch the video until three weeks after they filed charges against Sosa-Celis and Aljorna, and instead relied on "the ICE agent’s statement and an FBI agent’s affidavit describing the footage."
This revelation prompted a rebuke from Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey, who told the Times that "bare due diligence would have shown that the agents were lying."
Trump administration officials have come under fire in recent weeks for lying about shootings involving federal immigration officials, such as when former US Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem falsely claimed that slain Minneapolis intensive care nurse Alex Pretti was aiming “to inflict maximum damage on individuals and to kill law enforcement."
In reality, video footage showed Pretti never drew his handgun during his confrontation with federal immigration officers, while also clearly showing that officers disarmed him before they opened fire.
Noem also falsely claimed that slain ICE observer Renee Good had attempted "an act of domestic terrorism" by trying to run over a federal immigration officer with her car, even though footage clearly showed Good turning her vehicle away from the officer in an attempt to get away from the scene.
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Iran Says Trump Will Go Down as a 'Supreme War Criminal' If He Follows Through With Threat
"This is an express public incitement for war crimes and crimes against humanity—and, I would say, for genocide," said a spokesperson for Iran's Foreign Ministry.
Apr 06, 2026
Iranian officials on Monday warned US President Donald Trump that his name will be "etched in history as a supreme war criminal" if he follows through with his threat to wage total war on Iran's civilian infrastructure, including bridges and power plants.
Kazem Gharibabadi, Iran's deputy foreign minister, wrote on social media following Trump's Easter-morning outburst that "threats to attack power plants and bridges (civilian infrastructure) constitute war crimes under Article 8(2)(b) of the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court and Protocol I to the Geneva Conventions of 1977 (Article 52)."
"The president of the United States, in his capacity as the highest-ranking official of his country, has openly threatened to commit war crimes—an act that entails his individual criminal responsibility before the International Criminal Court and any competent national court," Gharibabadi added, vowing that Iran "will deliver a decisive, immediate, and regret-inducing response" to any attack.
Esmail Baghaei, a spokesperson for Iran's Foreign Ministry, said Trump's threats are "an indication of a criminal mindset."
"This is an express public incitement for war crimes and crimes against humanity—and, I would say, for genocide," Baghaei said in an interview on Sunday. "Threatening to attack a country's critical infrastructure, energy sector, it would mean that you want to put at risk the whole population."
Absolute bombshell. Iran's Spokesperson Esmail Baghaei accuses the Trump administration of a criminal mindset and public incitement for genocide. Threatening a nation's critical infrastructure puts the entire population at risk. The White House has completely abandoned morality. pic.twitter.com/HcBZGZho5p
— Furkan Gözükara (@FurkanGozukara) April 5, 2026
The US and Israel have already done significant damage to Iran's civilian infrastructure. The country's deputy health minister said Monday that more than 360 healthcare, education, and research centers have been hit by US-Israeli strikes, and dozens of medics have been killed since the bombing began on February 28.
But Trump on Sunday threatened an indiscriminate assault, telling Fox News that if the Iranians "don't make a deal and fast," he is "considering blowing everything up and taking the oil."
"You're going to see bridges and power plants dropping all over their country," the president said, setting a new deadline of 8 pm ET for the complete reopening of the Strait of Hormuz.
Trump's remarks came after he published a deranged post on his Truth Social platform demanding that Iran "open the Fuckin' Strait, you crazy bastards, or you'll be living in Hell."
Analysts and lawmakers in the US echoed Iranian officials' warnings that Trump's threatened attacks would constitute war crimes.
"Trump's advisers are telling him to hit civilian sites because it will cause unrest and potentially topple the regime. But just think about the insanity of this plan: kill tens of thousands of civilians in order to cause a national panic," US Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) wrote. "Bombing to induce political panic IS A WAR CRIME."
Dylan Williams, vice president for government affairs at the Center for International Policy, said that "any lawmaker who votes for supplemental funding for the war on Iran or against war powers resolutions to end it will be fully complicit in the war crimes threatened here, as well as those already committed by this unhinged and unfit Commander in Chief."
The US president's renewed threats came amid reports of a diplomatic effort, mediated in part by Pakistan, to enact a 45-day ceasefire to provide space for a lasting resolution to the war.
Axios reported that the talks are seen as "the only chance to prevent a dramatic escalation in the war that will include massive strikes on Iranian civilian infrastructure and a retaliation against energy and water facilities in the Gulf states."
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