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How can an employee die at her desk and remain undiscovered for so long in a place supposedly designed to enhance collaboration and human connection?
The recent, tragic story of Denise Prudhomme, a 60-year-old Wells Fargo employee who was found dead at her cubicle four days after she came into her office, challenges the prevailing narrative about the supposed social and collaborative benefits of in-person work. Prudhomme's death went unnoticed in an environment that is often portrayed as fostering better communication and team cohesion. This disturbing reality casts serious doubt on the claims made by many corporate leaders that bringing workers back to the office is essential for their well-being and collaboration. The story reveals a stark contrast between the idealized vision of in-office work and its practical shortcomings.
Corporate leaders frequently argue that remote work results in isolation and a loss of team spirit, emphasizing that the physical presence of employees is necessary to maintain a connected and innovative workplace. Yet, Prudhomme's case suggests otherwise. Despite being in the office, her presence—or rather, her tragic absence—went unnoticed for days. This raises a profound question: How can an employee die at her desk and remain undiscovered for so long in a place supposedly designed to enhance collaboration and human connection? Several employees noticed a foul odor but attributed it to faulty plumbing rather than the grim reality. This oversight reveals a significant disconnect between what companies claim about in-person work and what actually happens on the ground.
The death of Denise Prudhomme is a stark reminder that the supposed benefits of in-person work are often overstated or misunderstood.
Recent research adds another layer to this discussion. The Survey of Working Arrangements and Attitudes (SWAA), led by Nick Bloom and his colleagues, shows that employees spend only about 80 minutes on in-person activities during a typical office day. The rest of their time is spent on tasks like video conferencing, emailing, and using communication tools—tasks that are equally manageable from home. These findings highlight the inefficiencies of in-office work, where the supposed benefits of collaboration are minimal, and the majority of the workday could be performed just as effectively outside the office.
The push for in-office work is often framed as an attempt to combat isolation and enhance teamwork, but the truth seems to lie elsewhere. Instead of being about employee welfare, it may be more about outdated managerial control and resistance to change, as found in recent research led by Professor Mark Ma from the University of Pittsburgh, alongside his graduate student Yuye Ding. This compulsion not only creates a toxic work environment but also perpetuates a lack of genuine engagement among employees. The death of Prudhomme, unnoticed by her colleagues, serves as a grim reminder of the consequences of such a culture.
The Wells Fargo incident also underscores the limitations of traditional office environments. Many workplaces are structured in ways that can be isolating. This reality challenges the narrative that in-office work fosters better mental health and social engagement. If the physical presence of employees was genuinely the solution to isolation, how could such a tragedy occur without anyone noticing for so long? It becomes evident that the drive to return employees to the office is not necessarily about their well-being or improved collaboration but often about control, visibility, and maintaining the status quo.
To genuinely improve workplace dynamics and employee satisfaction, companies should reconsider how they structure in-person workdays. By focusing on meaningful in-person engagements and allowing remote work for tasks that do not require physical presence, companies can reduce unnecessary commuting, increase productivity, and significantly improve employee well-being.
The death of Denise Prudhomme is a stark reminder that the supposed benefits of in-person work are often overstated or misunderstood. The reality of her unnoticed death in a supposedly collaborative office setting reveals the emptiness of corporate claims about the need for physical presence to foster better teamwork and social connections.
"Underwriting is a huge missing piece of net-zero transition plans, allowing big U.S. banks to continue to help fossil fuel companies raise billions of dollars with limited scrutiny," said one campaigner.
A report out Monday sheds light on how big U.S. banks' underwriting of bonds and equities for polluting corporations constitutes a "hidden pipeline" for fossil fuel financing.
It's no secret that financial institutions play a leading role in driving the climate emergency. Since 2016, the year the Paris agreement took effect, the world's 60 largest private banks have provided more than $5.5 trillion in financing to the fossil fuel industry, flouting their pledges to put themselves and their clients on a path to net-zero greenhouse gas emissions as the window to avert the worst consequences of the intensifying climate crisis rapidly closes.
But banks' underwriting activities receive far less attention than their direct lending practices, even though both are instrumental in enabling fossil fuel expansion and must be reformed to rein in the industry most responsible for imperiling the planet's livability.
That's the key takeaway from a new analysis of Wall Street's participation in capital markets published by the Sierra Club's Fossil-Free Finance campaign.
"By only focusing on emissions reduction targets for their lending activities, banks are conveniently excluding half of their fossil fuel financing from their climate commitments."
"Banks play a vital role in capital markets," the report explains. "Acting as underwriters, they are the gatekeepers of fossil fuel companies: they advise companies issuing bonds and equities, hold the vital information on the issuer, and help market the instruments to investors disclosing only the necessary risk."
Since 2016, the six largest U.S. banks—JPMorgan Chase, Citi, Wells Fargo, Bank of America, Morgan Stanley, and Goldman Sachs—have provided more than $433 billion in lending and underwriting to 30 of the companies doing the most to increase fossil fuel extraction and combustion worldwide, the report notes. More than three-fifths (61%) of that financing comes from underwriting, with those half-dozen banking giants issuing $266 billion in new bonds and equities for the world's top 30 fossil fuel expansion firms.
Climate justice advocates have long criticized the concept of "net-zero" because, they argue, allowing planet-heating pollution to be "canceled out" via dubious carbon offset programs or risky carbon removal technologies is an accounting trick that doesn't guarantee the significant emissions cuts needed to avoid the climate emergency's most destructive impacts.
But even if one accepts the premise of net-zero, big U.S. banks' policies on the topic are misleading.
"Despite the importance of capital markets activities in helping fossil fuel companies secure new funding, banks focus primarily on lending, while downplaying the importance of underwriting, when setting their emissions reduction targets," the report says. "Banks are performing sleight of hand, distracting investors and regulators with net-zero transition plans that are half-finished, while continuing to funnel money to fossil fuel companies via capital markets with limited scrutiny."
In a statement, Adele Shraiman, senior campaign strategist with the Sierra Club's Fossil-Free Finance campaign, said that "without banks, fossil fuel companies cannot raise money through capital markets."
"By downplaying their role in capital markets and refusing to include facilitated emissions in their climate targets, big U.S. banks are intentionally sidestepping a major source of real-world emissions and making it impossible to meet their own net-zero commitments," said Shraiman.
According to the report: "Only three of the six major Wall Street banks include bond and equity underwriting in their sectoral emissions reduction targets—JPMorgan Chase, Goldman Sachs, and Wells Fargo. The remaining three banks have so far chosen to only apply emissions reduction targets to lending activities."
However, "even among those who have set emissions reduction targets that include underwriting, insufficient disclosures and lack of standardization make it difficult to understand how robust banks' facilitated emissions accounting methodologies are, and what progress they are making toward achieving their emissions reduction targets," the report adds.
In a blog post, Shraiman wrote that "banks don't want us to know all of the ways they help fossil fuel companies raise funds to continue building the pipelines, oil rigs, fracking wells, and coal mines that are destroying the climate and hurting communities."
"But investors, regulators, and customers around the world see through their duplicity," she continued. "We are demanding complete, robust, and transparent net-zero plans that cover all types of financing activities and will lead to real-world emissions reductions in line with our global climate goals."
"Banks don't want us to know all of the ways they help fossil fuel companies raise funds to continue building the pipelines, oil rigs, fracking wells, and coal mines that are destroying the climate."
Monday's report comes at a key moment in the fight to stop Wall Street from continuing to fund climate chaos.
As the Sierra Club observed, "Banks currently point to a lack of industry standards on underwriting to justify why they do not disclose or set targets for facilitated emissions." However, the industry-led Partnership for Carbon Accounting Financials is expected to release its updated methodology on accounting for and reducing facilitated emissions in the near future.
"Underwriting is a huge missing piece of net-zero transition plans, allowing big U.S. banks to continue to help fossil fuel companies raise billions of dollars with limited scrutiny," Shraiman said. "By only focusing on emissions reduction targets for their lending activities, banks are conveniently excluding half of their fossil fuel financing from their climate commitments."
"It's time," she added, "for the major Wall Street banks to adopt a robust and consistent methodology for accounting facilitated emissions, and take full responsibility for the climate impacts of their underwriting decisions."
The International Energy Agency has stated unequivocally that there is "no need for investment in new fossil fuel supply in our net-zero pathway."
After the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change released its latest assessment in March, United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres said that limiting temperature rise to 1.5°C is possible, "but it will take a quantum leap in climate action," including a ban on approving and financing new coal, oil, and gas projects as well as a phaseout of existing fossil fuel production.
"Investors who voted against these resolutions should expect to have a hard time sleeping at night with the knowledge that their misplaced greed will lead to climate destruction and chaos," said one campaigner
Activists on Tuesday lamented their failure of various climate and Indigenous rights resolutions at the annual shareholder meetings of some of the nation's biggest banks, with one campaigner accusing the financial institutions of prioritizing "profit over people and our planet."
Just 10% of Citigroup shareholders and 7% of those owning Bank of America stock voted for resolutions urging banks to adopt a phaseout of financing for new fossil fuel projects. An unknown percentage of Wells Fargo shareholders voted for the resolution. Similar resolutions proposed last year garnered 13% of the vote at Citi and 11% at Bank of America and Wells Fargo.
Those three banks combined have financed nearly $1 trillion in fossil fuel projects since the Paris climate agreement was implemented in 2016, according to a report published earlier this month by a coalition of green groups.
\u201cToday, activist shareholders at 3 of the largest funders of fossil fuels in the world \u2014 @Citi @BankofAmerica & @WellsFargo \u2014 made resolutions for these banks to transition away from fossil fuel financing. Together they've contributed $1 TRILLION since 2016 https://t.co/QmNiLV4mIZ\u201d— Rainforest Action Network (RAN) (@Rainforest Action Network (RAN)) 1682455986
The resolutions were filed by Trillium Asset Management at Bank of America, Harrington Investments at Citigroup, and Sierra Club Foundation at Wells Fargo.
Nearly 30% of Bank of America shareholders also backed forcing the institution to release a 2030 climate transition plan, while 31% Citi investors endorsed a resolution requiring the company to publish a report on the effects of its policies and actions on Indigenous peoples' human rights.
As Sierra Club noted:
Investor filers made several amendments to the fossil fuel financing proposals at the banks this year, including asking banks to adopt a policy to phase out financing for projects and companies engaging in new fossil fuel exploration and development, which is incompatible with limiting global warming to 1.5°C, and encouraging banks to provide financing for energy sector clients to credibly transition to cleaner technologies, which could safeguard against greenwashing and accelerate the clean energy transition.
Tuesday's shareholder votes followed protests the previous day outside the headquarters of Bank of America in Charlotte, Citigroup in New York, and Wells Fargo in San Francisco. Dozens of activists slept overnight outside Citi's headquarters.
\u201cThank you to everyone showing up today! Shareholders need to know that everyone sees what a destructive climate force these banks are.\u201d— Bill McKibben (@Bill McKibben) 1682353417
"While... Citi shareholders continue to support evaluating its policies and impacts on Indigenous peoples, it's saddening and maddening to see the numbers drop a few points as our homelands are destroyed across the globe," said Tara Houska, a member of the Couchiching First Nation and founder of the Giniw Collective.
"These are not uninformed people, they are folks who hold an incredible amount of influence on social discourse and outcomes that impact all life," she added. "Hiding behind jargon and polite rooms are actions they choose as the world's finite freshwater is irreparably harmed."
Stephone M. Coward II, who runs the economic justice and Paid in Full campaigns at the Hip Hop Caucus, argued that "once again, these financial institutions prioritize profit over people and our planet."
"Pollution from fossil fuels worsens the effects of climate change, and together they create a destructive loop that disproportionately impacts the well-being of Black, Brown, and Indigenous people," Coward added. "We must continue to use all the financial levers of power to shift financial capital away from industries causing harm and toward communities that hold the solutions."
\u201cIt's time to escalate. For shareholders who care about Indigenous rights and our climate, it's time to consider divesting from fossil banks. They aren't changing and simply voting for non-binding resolutions ain't cutting it. \n\nTake your \ud83d\udcb0 out - the banks will start to listen.\u201d— Richard Brooks \u2600\ufe0f (@Richard Brooks \u2600\ufe0f) 1682446751
Jessye Waxman, the senior campaign representative for Sierra Club's Fossil-Free Finance campaign, said in a statement that "investors have once again failed to align their voting with their stated positions on climate-related financial risk."
"Stewardship is central to many investors' own net-zero commitments, so it's alarming that investors—including the biggest institutional investors like BlackRock and Vanguard—continue to choose a hands-off approach to climate risk mitigation," Waxman added.
Vanguard recently surpassed BlackRock as the world's leading institutional investor in fossil fuels, with the former holding $269 billion in coal, oil, and gas investments and the latter $263 billion.
\u201c"These banks target communities, like mine, treating us as collateral damage to corporate profiteering," says @Mzozane reflecting on the results of today's annual shareholder meetings at @Citi, @WellsFargo, and @BankofAmerica\n\nhttps://t.co/ZcGCLj13cO\u201d— Stop the Money Pipeline (@Stop the Money Pipeline) 1682452405
"Big investors are ignoring science and the needs of frontline communities, protecting the status quo over the changes needed to protect people and planet from climate disaster," Alec Connon, coordinator of the Stop the Money Pipeline, said in a statement. "A transition is coming one way or another: Banks and their investors can help make it orderly and just, or they can pretend they don't see what's coming as they drive the planet off a cliff."
"Investors who voted against these resolutions should expect to have a hard time sleeping at night with the knowledge that their misplaced greed will lead to climate destruction and chaos," Connon added.