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Voluntary Pledges 'Aren’t Working,' Report Shows as Big Banks Continue to Sow Climate Chaos
"Banks keep telling us they’re committed to climate. Then they abandon their own policies the moment political pressure mounts. Voluntary pledges have had their chance. We need binding rules—not promises.”
Jun 09, 2026
Calls for an end to oil, gas, and coal extraction grew louder in 2025 as the impact of fossil-fueled planetary heating was starkly illustrated by devastating wildfires across the Los Angeles area, deadly flash floods in Texas, a European heatwave that was blamed for the deaths of more than 24,000 people, and cyclones and floods that killed thousands.
But as climate action groups demanded that governments and financial institutions end support for fossil fuel projects and companies last year, according to a report released Monday by several organizations, the world's largest banks only committed more financing to projects like the Mountain Valley Pipeline, a planned liquefied natural gas (LNG) "boom" in the Philippines, and fracking in the Permian Basin.
Last year, according to Banking on Climate Chaos—released by groups including the Rainforest Action Network, Sierra Club, and Oil Change International—the world's largest financial institutions committed $906 billion in financing to fossil fuel companies, representing an 8% increase over funding the previous year.
The groups emphasized that the banks financed pollution-causing oil, gas, and coal projects even as they made "voluntary commitments" to “aligning their lending, investment, and capital markets activities with net-zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050," as a now-defunct United Nations-backed scheme called the Net-Zero Banking Alliance (NZBA) pledged.
More than a decade after countries agreed to the Paris climate accord and pledged to take action in a push to avert planetary heating over 1.5°C above pre-industrial temperatures, the report notes, "banks maintain and are expected to uphold climate policies independent of the NZBA."
However, it continues, "the collapse of the NZBA—culminating in its cessation of operations in October 2025—freed banks to further unwind from climate targets and other elements of their climate strategies."
"Notably, throughout 2025 and the first half of 2026, banks have further weakened their commitments to uphold 1.5˚C temperature rise limits, widened loopholes, and undercut sector policies for coal, oil, and gas energy or power supply primarily by removing or diluting exclusion criteria and commitments. Most policy changes in the past year were downgrades of existing policies rather than improvements," reads the report.
"Voluntary commitments aren’t working. No major oil and gas company is doing anything even close to what is needed to hold global heating to 1.5°C, and voluntary banking sector pledges like the Net Zero Banking Alliance aren’t cutting their pipeline of cash."
Diogo Silva, campaign lead for BankTrack and a co-author of the report, said: "Banks keep telling us they’re committed to climate. Then they abandon their own policies the moment political pressure mounts. Voluntary pledges have had their chance. We need binding rules—not promises.”
Banking on Climate Chaos highlights the banks that spent the most money investing in fossil fuel projects, with JPMorgan Chase named the leading financier of oil, coal, and gas. The Wall Street firm spent $58 billion in 2025, the same year it also "weakened" its own climate policy.
"Of the 15 North American banks in scope, 12 now have no meaningful fossil fuel commitments," said Rainforest Action network. "JPMorgan Chase and Goldman Sachs abandoned their coal and Arctic exclusions entirely, converting them into case-by-case due diligence standards."
JPMorgan Chase is one of three US banks listed in the top five fossil fuel backers; Bank of America financed the second-largest amount of pollution-causing projects at $47 billion, while Citigroup poured more than $45 billion into fossil fuels. Two Japanese institutions, Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group and Mizuho Financial, were also in the top five.
With President Donald Trump taking executive action last year aimed at pressuring companies to back fossil fuel interests and "disregard social or environmental considerations," the report notes, US banks' share of all global fossil fuel financing increased to 32%, representing "the single largest source of fossil capital in the world." In 2021, US banks provided 28% of fossil fuel investment.
Trump has also aggressively pushed for more coal production since taking office for his second term in January 2025, and financing for coal mining expansion surged 77% in 2025, to $84 billion. Funding for coal power also grew by 40%, with companies pouring $81 billion into coal-fired plants.
Even when asked about the report's findings, top banks pointed to their own voluntary commitments to finance renewable energy projects and "achieve net zero financed emissions by 2050," as a spokesperson for Citigroup said to The Guardian.
The spokesperson said the bank "supports clients in the low‑carbon transition while recognizing the real need for secure, affordable and reliable energy today. We are committed to... advancing our $1 trillion sustainable finance goal, with a focus on balancing the transition with global energy resilience”.
David Tong, global industry campaign manager for Oil Change International and a co-author of the report, warned that "every dollar of finance for oil and gas helps an industry of war profiteers squeeze out short-term profits, further trapping communities into paying higher fossil fuel energy bills, fueling war and conflict, and burning all our futures."
"Voluntary commitments aren’t working. No major oil and gas company is doing anything even close to what is needed to hold global heating to 1.5°C, and voluntary banking sector pledges like the Net Zero Banking Alliance aren’t cutting their pipeline of cash," he said. "Instead, banks have injected over staggering $900 billion into fossil fuel financing in 2025 alone. Governments must step in and take urgent action to hold financial institutions and fossil fuel companies accountable for their role in the climate crisis.”
Since the Paris climate agreement, the report says, banks have poured a staggering $8.7 trillion into the fossil fuel industry, with the "Dirty Dozen," as the authors call the 12 largest fossil fuel financial backers, providing nearly 40% of all investment for coal, oil, and gas extraction.
The report makes demands of banks, calling on them to "exclude all finance for fossil fuel expansion immediately" and "require robust, 1.5°C-aligned transition plans from all existing fossil fuel clients"—but emphasizes that governments must compel financial institutions to end financing for oil, gas, and coal.
"After two consecutive years of fossil fuel finance increases by global banks—especially the increase in fossil fuel expansion finance and the continued backtracking from banks on their climate pledges—it is clear that the banking sector will not voluntarily take the necessary steps to transition out of fossil fuel finance at the pace and scale needed for the world to deliver on the Paris Agreement goals," reads the report.
Instead, it says, governments must mandate transition planning by banks, private equity holders, insurers, and other companies; make polluters pay for climate damages; ensure public finance institutions are subject to transparent reporting and legal accountability to international standards, and rapidly wind down supply-side fossil fuel subsidies, tax exemptions, subsidies, guarantees or other public assistance for new oil, gas, and coal projects.
"A decade after Paris, just twelve banks now drive more than a third of the world’s fossil fuel financing—proof that this is no longer a problem of markets, but of a small set of decision-makers making active choices," said Niko Lusiani, research director for Rainforest Action Network. "They are choosing to lock in an energy system that hands record profits to a few fossil firms while passing the costs onto the three of every four people on Earth who depend on imported fuel."
"The good news is that what a handful of banks built," said Lusiani, "governments and people worldwide have the power to change.”
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The Democratic Party Has a History Problem
Party leadership needs to study and learn from what the Wall Street wing has cost in terms of lost elections and the increasing tilt of the playing field.
May 28, 2026
In his stumbling explanation of the muddled autopsy report on the 2024 election debacle, Democratic National Committee chair Ken Martin uttered two pieces of wisdom that regrettably, neither he nor the party has heeded: “The Democratic brand is in trouble and needs repair,” and “I agree with folks who have said we have to learn from the past to win the future.” Had they followed that advice, they would have seen how history tells a neglected and important story.
It begins when Bill Clinton was handed the keys to the White House by a group of largely Southern officials who formed the New Democrats with the mission of putting a Southern, pro-business candidate in the White House. With its pointed references to Reagan speeches and policies, Clinton’s Second Inaugural signaled a devil’s bargain that ended a century of Democratic Party policies.
In 1896, William Jennings Bryan had articulated the level playing field principles that served as the Democrats’ North Star for much of the last century: “There are those who believe that, if you will only legislate to make the well-to-do prosperous, their prosperity will leak through on those below. The Democratic idea, however, has been that if you legislate to make the masses prosperous, their prosperity will find its way up through every class which rests upon them.” In the term following his inaugural rejection of those principles, Clinton repealed one of the crown jewels of the New Deal, the Glass-Steagall Act regulating banks, and handed social media the gift of the Communications Decency Act of 1996, exempting them from the rules governing print and broadcasting.
In the years since Bill Clinton left the White House for a comfortable retirement, the New Democrats asserted control of the party, courting big donors with the pro-Wall Street policies resembling those of his second term. Their strategy uncannily mirrored that of Donald Trump’s Republicans by offering positions on social issues that appeased elements of the base while supporting economic policies benefiting corporate America. In their fight for the soul of the party, the New Democrats pulled no punches, blocking Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) in 2016 and primarying 2026 opponents with the zeal of Donald Trump.
One lesson history teaches us is that if inequalities are allowed to fester, things can get very ugly.
Their biggest failure may be that in abandoning the level playing field principle, the New Democrats offered no substitute, save triangulation. Today most of us would stumble over trying to define the Democratic Party in one sentence, but one can easily do that for the Republicans—less taxes, less government. With the midterms six months away, this lack of a unified message already has the faithful worried.
The historical data missing from the autopsy and Martin’s explanations tells the story of what the ascension of the Wall Street Democrats has cost their party and the country. Since 2000, the Democrats have controlled the House only 4 out of 15 terms and the Senate only 6 out of 15. For only four years have Democrats held a majority of state governerships. Democratic presidential victories were anomalies. Barack Obama benefited from a record turnout of BIPOC voters. Joe Biden won because of the mishandling of Covid-19. Even allowing for gerrymandering and voter suppression, it appears clear that the Democratic Party has been in decline for some time.
Given the pro-Wall Street leanings of both parties, we should not be surprised that we have essentially been governed by a minority. Since 2000, the winning presidential candidate has only averaged 30.18% of the voting-eligible population. Today, only 27% of voters identify with either party, while 45% identify as independents. That is the lowest total ever for Democrats.
The numbers in various data and reports tell how the tilt of the playing field continues to widen. Although real total wealth has tripled since 1989, the share of the top 10% has increased from 63% to 72%, but the bottom 50% saw their share decline from 4% to 2%. Meanwhile, labor’s share of production has declined ominously. According to the St. Louis Federal Reserve, it fell from 64% in 2001 to 56% in 2023. During most of the 1950s and 60s it hovered around 60%.
Business concentration recalls the trusts that sparked such widespread discontent during the late 19th century. The best figures come from a study by the Democratic staff of the House Committee on Small Business that was mothballed after its release in December 2023—and goes unmentioned in the autopsy. Bristling with footnotes, the eye-opening Report on Competition in the Small Business Economy cites a Boston Federal Reserve study that shows the economy is 50% more concentrated today than in 2005. It goes on to state, “The dramatic increase in income and wealth inequality seen over the past four decades in the US can also be largely attributed to higher levels of concentration across industries.” Sounding like an outraged 1890 Farmers’ Alliance tract, the study paints a grim picture of today’s farmers: “From the seeds they plant, to the fertilizer in the soil to the machinery that allows them to make it all happen at scale, the price they pay at every step is at the whim of a handful of companies.”
Faced with similar conditions during the Gilded Age, discontented workers and farmers organized to press for the Sherman, Interstate Commerce, and Safety Appliance Acts; laid the groundwork for the 16th, 17th, and 19th amendments; initiated bureaus of labor statistics and factory inspections; and enhanced access to higher education. Because they feared both parties were the tools of tycoons, the discontented also formed new parties, of which the Greenbackers and Populists are the most notable. Most of all, in a flurry of civic engagement, they founded groups like the Grange, Knights of Labor, Women’s Christian Temperance Movement, and Farmers’ Alliance.
Whether today’s discontent will have a similar impact remains an open question. A good part of the answer will depend on whether people like Ken Martin continue to support the Wall Street wing of the party or realize what that support has cost in terms of lost elections and the increasing tilt of the playing field. What is clear is that the drastically tilted playing field has become extremely volatile. One lesson history teaches us is that if inequalities are allowed to fester, things can get very ugly. During the discontent of the Gilded Age, lynchings averaged 150 per year between 1881 and 1900, or one every 2.4 days. Another 1,400 people perished in riots, in the most violent three decades in our history. All of us can see and fear the growling, anvil-shaped clouds that threaten to darken our lives, as they did over a century ago.
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'Opportunistic' Fossil Fuel Execs Cashed In on Trump's Iran War With Record Stock Sales
One climate reporter warned their windfalls "will go toward political campaigns and lobbying organizations dedicated to fighting climate regulation, blocking clean energy policy, and fueling authoritarianism."
Apr 08, 2026
After pouring money into President Donald Trump's successful campaign to take back the White House, US fossil fuel industry executives cashed in on his and Israel's war on Iran with record-setting stock sales, according to a VerityData analysis reported on Wednesday by The Wall Street Journal.
"Much of the selling for the first quarter began before the US and Israel began bombing Iran on February 28," and some "were prearranged under plans that allow executives to sell stock automatically at specific times or share prices without making in-the-moment decisions that could leave them open to allegations of improper trading," the newspaper acknowledged.
However, as share prices for the industry skyrocketed—Iran responded to the US-Israeli assault by shutting down the Strait of Hormuz, a key trade route for fossil fuels—executives at Chevron, ConocoPhillips, Diamondback Energy, and other oil and gas companies collectively sold $1.4 billion in stock.
"At nearly a dozen companies, the number of executives selling in the quarter reached or surpassed 10-year records, and in some cases set all-time records," the Journal detailed. "The sales hit a 15-year peak, with nearly six executives selling for every one that bought shares in the first quarter—well over double the usual ratio."
"CEOs stood out as big sellers in many cases," the newspaper highlighted, noting that "Chevron chief executive Mike Wirth sold some $104 million worth of shares between January and March. ConocoPhillips's Ryan Lance netted about $54.3 million in share sales in March alone. Lorenzo Simonelli, CEO of oil field services company Baker Hughes, sold about $33 million worth of stock that same month."
VerityData's head of research, Ben Silverman, said that "it speaks to the opportunistic behavior of everyone involved—it could be opportunistic set months earlier, it could be opportunistic in the moment... There was a breathlessness to the selling, and the message they sent was to cash in now because the ride won't last forever."
Who's profiting from ridiculous and unnecessary wars? Big Oil CEOs, to name one obvious group. @emorwee.bsky.social heated.world/p/chevrons-c...
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— Ross Macfarlane (@rossmacfarlane.bsky.social) April 8, 2026 at 5:04 PM
In her Heated newsletter, climate journalist Emily Atkin pointed out that "this isn't the first time a small group of extraordinarily wealthy oil CEOs used a war to make themselves richer. In the weeks after President Joe Biden said that he was 'convinced' Russia would invade Ukraine in 2022, Big Oil CEOs sold almost $99 million worth of shares, according to an analysis by Friends of the Earth and BailoutWatch."
According to Atkin:
What really makes this story remarkable is not simply that oil executives got rich from a war. It's how perfectly legal and normal it all is, and what that legality reveals about who wins and who loses when America goes to war.
When America goes to war, the costs are distributed broadly, onto every American who drives a car or heats a home. The benefits are distributed narrowly, flowing to a small group of men whose compensation is designed to capture exactly this kind of windfall.
And the cash windfall these oil executives make from the war won't go primarily toward yachts and private jets (they already have those). It will go toward political campaigns and lobbying organizations dedicated to fighting climate regulation, blocking clean energy policy, and fueling authoritarianism.
The Journal reporting came on the heels of Trump and Iran agreeing to a fragile two-week ceasefire negotiated by Pakistan late Tuesday. While Israel is supposedly on board, it escalated attacks on Lebanon on Wednesday.
As a Pakistani official publicly reiterated that Lebanon is still part of the deal and Iran threatened to back out altogether, Janet Abou-Elias, a researcher with the Democratizing Foreign Policy program at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, told Common Dreams that Israel's assault "appeared to be a direct attempt to blow up the ceasefire, and it worked."
Meanwhile, although oil prices dropped after the ceasefire announcement, "'fossilflation'—or inflation caused by volatile and rising prices of oil and gas—is still likely to continue," the global climate group 350.org warned on Wednesday.
"Even if the Strait of Hormuz reopens and the ceasefire holds, oil and gas prices will stay above pre-war levels, and consumers will pay," said Andreas Sieber, 350.org's head of political strategy. "Volatility remains high, and supply will stay tight due to infrastructure damage and inventory rebuilding."
The group said last week that war-related spikes in oil and gas prices "have already cost consumers and businesses an additional $104.2-$111.6 billion" globally, and an analysis from Democratic members of the congressional Joint Economic Committee found that Americans spent an extra $8.4 billion at the fuel pump during the first month of Trump's war.
Throughout the conflict, 350.org and other green groups have advocated for a windfall profits tax targeting oil and gas giants, as well as renewed calls for a swift and just international transition away from climate-wrecking fossil fuels.
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