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Climate Inaction Is a Betrayal of the Young, and They Feel It
Our institutions—from the White House to the university president, from the bank CEO to the labor leader, from the newspaper editor to the religious leader—need to be willing to show some ability to change.
Feb 21, 2024
There’s no question that the rate of climate anxiety is growing—how could it not be, on a world where fires and floods are increasingly commonplace? And once your house has flooded—well, the next rainstorm, or even the next forecast, is going to bring back too many memories.
But I’ve found that a fair number of people, especially younger ones, are feeling really desperate anxiety even before they’ve had a traumatic experience, to the point where, for instance, they don’t want to have children of their own. My guess is that this has as much to do with the sense that they’ve been abandoned by the leading institutions—political and economic—of our societies, who can’t bring themselves to acknowledge the scale of this emergency or break old practices.
I’ve been thinking all week at my anger at America’s big banks, the companies that represent the capital in capitalism—as I explained last week, they’ve now backed away even from their very scant climate commitments, fearful it might cost them a bit at the margins. And this week the Biden administration let it be known it was going to relax the timetable for getting rid of internal combustion engines, because of combined pressure from the auto companies and the auto workers union.
I remember debating a wind power opponent at Dartmouth years ago; when he was done making his case that no one should have to look at these “monstrosities,” the first question from a student was: “Could you please explain how you managed to get your head so far up your butt?”
I have no more sympathy for the car companies than the banks—they’ve opposed every regulation anyone has ever proposed, at least as far back as seat belts. And I have lots of sympathy for the UAW—they deserved and needed a new contract, which is why many of us tried to play at least a tiny part in helping their successful fall strike. They fret that moving too fast could cost jobs, which is a real worry. But moving too slow has a huge cost too, on a planet that has just come through its hottest year in the last 125,000: Passenger vehicles contribute almost a third of America’s carbon emissions. In a world that understood the climate crisis as an emergency, UAW president Shawn Fain, and the car company CEOs, and the Biden administration would be out on the stump together, doing everything they could to get people to buy EVs.
No need to single out the UAW, especially since they’re doing their best to undercut the Trump campaign (he’d love to make electric cars, which he insists grind to a halt after 15 minutes of driving, a centerpiece of his campaign). After all, we could say the same thing about all those universities that have fought fossil fuel divestment because it’s easier just to keep investing as you have in the past, or those insurance companies that continue to underwrite new pipelines even as their data show the inexorable rise in climate damage, or those longtime residents of cities and suburbs who oppose denser housing in their communities even though it’s clearly a key part of both cutting emissions and letting the next generation have an affordable place to live. If you’re a young person you could look at them all and think: They don’t want even relatively small changes, and in the process they’re guaranteeing that absolutely everything will change for us.
I think older people underestimate how often their resistance to change is read as disregard for the future. I remember debating a wind power opponent at Dartmouth years ago; when he was done making his case that no one should have to look at these “monstrosities,” the first question from a student was: “Could you please explain how you managed to get your head so far up your butt?” There are occasions when I despair that the motto of my beloved Vermont, oldest state in the union, should be “change anything you want once I’m dead.”
A global study in The Lancet a couple of years ago attempted to quantify this sense of what the authors called “betrayal.” The researchers found deep-seated climate anxiety around the planet. Read the findings just to let them sink in:
A large proportion of children and young people around the world report emotional distress and a wide range of painful, complex emotions (sad, afraid, angry, powerless, helpless, guilty, ashamed, despair, hurt, grief, and depressed). Similarly, large numbers report experiencing some functional impact and have pessimistic beliefs about the future (people have failed to care for the planet; the future is frightening; humanity is doomed; they won’t have access to the same opportunities their parents had; things they value will be destroyed; security is threatened; and they are hesitant to have children). These results reinforce findings of earlier empirical research and expand on previous findings by showing the extensive, global nature of this distress, as well as its impact on functioning. Climate distress is clearly evident both in countries that are already experiencing extensive physical impacts of climate change, such as the Philippines, a nation that is highly vulnerable to coastal flooding and typhoons. It is also evident in countries where the direct impacts are still less severe, such as the U.K., where populations are relatively protected from extreme weather events.
And they also found that that feeling of abandonment was a huge part of the problem:
Distress appears to be greater when young people believe that government response is inadequate, which leads us to argue that the failure of governments to adequately reduce, prevent, or mitigate climate change is contributing to psychological distress, moral injury, and injustice.
Such high levels of distress, functional impact, and feelings of betrayal will negatively affect the mental health of children and young people. Climate anxiety might not constitute a mental illness, but the realities of climate change alongside governmental failures to act are chronic, long-term, and potentially inescapable stressors. These factors are likely to increase the risk of developing mental health problems, particularly in more vulnerable individuals such as children and young people, who often face multiple life stressors without having the power to reduce, prevent, or avoid such stressors.
Humans are remarkable creatures. Though we can, uniquely, worry about the future, we can also, uniquely, feel the kind of solidarity and support that lets us carry on even amidst great travail. But isolation, lack of connection—they crack us.
Our institutions—from the White House to the university president, from the bank CEO to the labor leader, from the newspaper editor to the religious leader—need to be willing to show some ability to change in the face of an emergency. We’re not even talking huge sacrifice—the difference between making EVs and making old-school SUVs, or investing in a fossil-free index fund, or ending loans to oil companies, is not existential to any of the parties involved. They are small hits indeed compared with the hits that are headed our way if the planet keeps heating. And the willingness to change would not only help us weather this crisis physically—it would also help us weather it emotionally.
We only get one life. The thought that young people are having to live theirs under this shadow—damaged by the climate crisis even before its fully hit them—should give all of us real pause. There’s a generational theft underway: of water and ice and coral, but also of security and ease.
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GOP Lawmakers Caught Plagiarizing Bank Lobbyist Talking Points
"We bet it was super easy for Patrick McHenry and Andy Barr to decide their position on predatory overdraft fees, since all they did is copy and paste whatever Big Banks said."
Jan 24, 2024
A pair of Republican lawmakers on the House Financial Services Committee issued a statement last week criticizing a new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau proposal aimed at cracking down on predatory overdraft fees, claiming the rule would harm consumers.
But they didn't mention that parts of their criticism of the rule precisely mirrored the talking points of the Consumer Bankers Association (CBA), a lobbying group that represents financial institutions that rake in huge profits by hitting their customers with often unexpected overdraft charges. The group's membership list includes JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America, Citigroup, and Wells Fargo as well as smaller banks from around the country.
Rep. Patrick McHenry (R-N.C.), the chair of the House Financial Services Committee, and Rep. Andy Barr (R-Ky.) said in their statement that the CFPB's rule reflects "the Biden administration's attempts to mandate one-size-fits-all consumer financial products and services."
"We urge the CFPB to withdraw this misguided proposal that harms the very consumers the agency was created to protect," the GOP lawmakers added.
As Politico's Caitlin Oprysko pointed out late Tuesday, McHenry and Barr's response bears a close resemblance to language used by CBA president Lindsey Johnson, who warned the consumer agency's "misguided proposal" and "one-size-fits-all approach" could "undo years of progress" that banks have purportedly made in reforming their overdraft policies.
"Shilling for their financial industry megadonors has become so involuntary and routine that they're now literally copying and pasting talking points from banking lobbyists."
The similarities between the Republican lawmakers' response to the rule and CBA talking points become more glaring further down in McHenry and Barr's statement, which says that "consumers must proactively opt-in to use overdraft services."
Oprysko observed that the CBA uses the same exact wording on a website it launched earlier this month in opposition to the CFPB's overdraft rule, which the agency estimates could save U.S. consumers more than $3.5 billion in fees per year.
"Consumers must proactively opt-in to use overdraft services," the website reads, adding that "consumers can discontinue overdraft services at any time."
McHenry and Barr similarly say that consumers "can discontinue these services at any time." The lawmakers and CBA also "both highlight the same 2023 survey finding about consumer sentiment toward overdraft services and the same quote from a Biden administration financial regulator," Oprysko noted.
A spokesperson for CBA told Politico that the lobbying organization did not coordinate with McHenry or Barr on their responses to the rule but that "we like their message and agree with it." A Barr spokesperson told the outlet that the responses were so similar because the CFPB's proposal is "clearly problematic."
Liz Zelnick, director of the Economic Security and Corporate Power program at the progressive watchdog group Accountable.US, said in a statement Wednesday that "for Chairman McHenry and Rep. Barr, shilling for their financial industry megadonors has become so involuntary and routine that they're now literally copying and pasting talking points from banking lobbyists and trying to pass it off as their own."
"But what's more unethical is that McHenry and Barr continue to claim consumers should be grateful for hidden and excessive overdraft fees when their only real purpose is to pad profits for big banks and credit unions," said Zelnick. "McHenry and Barr can appease bank CEOs and lobbyists all they want by parroting industry misinformation, but they should at least be honest that they're doing it at the expense of consumers, not to their benefit. The fact remains, the Biden administration crackdown on excessive overdraft penalties like a $42 charge on a gallon of milk will directly benefit consumers by lowering their costs."
According to the CFPB, around 23 million U.S. households pay overdraft fees every year, often getting hit with $35 charges even though overdrafts are typically less than $26.
The agency said in a statement last week that its rule would "close an outdated loophole that exempts overdraft lending services from longstanding provisions of the Truth in Lending Act and other consumer financial protection laws." The rule would apply to banks with more than $10 billion in assets.
The proposed rule garnered enthusiastic praise from consumer advocacy organizations.
Kimberly Fountain, consumer field manager at Americans for Financial Reform, said that "curbing abusive overdraft fees will help stop Wall Street from padding its bottom line with the hard-earned money of millions of families in the United States."
"Overdraft fees are not so much a useful service as they are a lucrative profit center underwritten by the most economically vulnerable consumers," Fountain added.
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Despite Net-Zero Vows, Wall Street 'Climate Arsonists' Still Pumping Billions Into Fossil Fuels
"It is business as usual for most banks and investors who continue to support fossil fuel developers without any restrictions, despite their high-profile commitments to carbon neutrality."
Jan 17, 2023
Top banks in the United States and around the world have made a show of embracing net-zero emissions pledges, portraying themselves as allies in the fight against the global climate emergency.
But a new analysis published Tuesday by a group of NGOs makes clear that the world's leading financial institutions—including major Wall Street banks such as Citigroup, JPMorgan Chase, and Bank of America—are still pumping money into fossil fuel expansion, bolstering the industry that is primarily responsible for worsening climate chaos.
According to the report, 56 of the largest banks in the Net-Zero Banking Alliance (NZBA)—a coalition convened by the United Nations—have provided nearly $270 billion in the form of loans and underwriting to more than 100 "major fossil fuel expanders," from Saudi Aramco to ExxonMobil to Shell.
Additionally, 58 of the biggest members of the Net-Zero Asset Managers (NZAM) initiative—including the investment behemoths BlackRock and Vanguard—held at least $847 billion worth of stocks and bonds in more than 200 large fossil fuel developers as of September.
Both the NZBA and the NZAM are under the umbrella of the Glasgow Financial Alliance for Net-Zero (GFANZ), a campaign launched in 2021 with the goal of expanding "the number of net zero-committed financial institutions." Climate advocates have long argued that net-zero pledges are fundamentally inadequate to the task of stopping runaway warming.
"The science is very clear: we need to stop developing new coal, oil, and gas projects as soon as possible if we want to meet our climate goals and avoid a worst-case scenario," said Lucie Pinson, the executive director and founder of the watchdog group Reclaim Finance. "Yet, it is business as usual for most banks and investors who continue to support fossil fuel developers without any restrictions, despite their high-profile commitments to carbon neutrality."
"Their greenwashing is all the more damaging as it casts doubt on the sincerity of all net-zero commitments and undermines the efforts of those who are truly acting for the climate," Pinson added.
\u201c\ud83d\udea8 NEW REPORT: since joining the Glasgow Financial Alliance for Net Zero #GFANZ, financial institutions have provided HUNDREDS OF BILLIONS of $ to fossil fuel expansion \ud83d\udca3\n \nIt's the finding of a report published today by 13 NGOs including Reclaim Finance.\n\n#GFANZFuelsFire #wef23\u201d— Reclaim Finance (@Reclaim Finance) 1673944009
The groups found that the U.S.-based Wall Street giants Citigroup, JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America, Morgan Stanley, and Wells Fargo provided nearly $90 billion in total financing for fossil fuel expansion between the dates they joined the NZBA and August 2022.
Citigroup, which touts its net-zero commitments on its website, led the pack with $30.5 billion in fossil fuel financing from April 2021 to August 2022.
"The U.S. financial sector cannot be taken seriously on climate change until it stops investing in new fossil fuel projects," said Adele Shraiman, a representative for the Sierra Club's Fossil-Free Finance campaign. "We need an urgent transition to a green economy and the financial sector must help deliver that."
Overall, according to the new report, "229 of the world's largest fossil fuel developers received finance from the 161 GFANZ members covered... which will support them to develop new coal power plants, mines, ports, and other infrastructure, as well as new oil and gas fields and pipelines and LNG terminals."
"These new fossil fuel projects are incompatible with the objective of limiting global warming to 1.5°C, as confirmed in the latest International Energy Agency's World Energy Outlook published in October 2022," the report states. "They will lock in greenhouse gas emissions for decades, despite the adoption of decarbonization targets by some GFANZ members."
Paddy McCully, a senior analyst at Reclaim Finance, said in a statement that "GFANZ members are acting as climate arsonists."
"They've pledged to achieve net-zero but are continuing to pour hundreds of billions of dollars into fossil fuel developers," said McCully. "GFANZ and its member alliances will only be credible once they up their game and insist that their members help bring a rapid end to the era of coal, oil, and fossil gas expansion."
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