When It Comes to the Climate Crisis, Those Responsible Should Be Held Accountable

Along with many others, I’ve spent the last four years urging JPMorgan Chase to stop providing financial services to the fossil fuel industry. It’s been no easy task. Since the Paris Agreement was signed, Chase has loaned more than $317 billion to the fossil fuel industry—33% more than any other bank on the planet. Want to build a massive new tar sands pipeline? JPMorgan is your bank. What to build a vast new coal mine? Just give Chase CEO Jamie Dimon a call, he’s your man.

In the climate fight, Lee Raymond is the ultimate Bond villain. As the CEO of ExxonMobil, he was the chief architect of a decades-long disinformation campaign to discredit climate science and brainwash Americans into questioning the reality of climate change.In years of campaigning against JPMorgan, activists have tried a lot of tactics―from filing shareholder resolutions to shutting down streets outside of their headquarters. But last year, the campaign took a new twist. For the first time, it got personal.

In the climate fight, Lee Raymond is the ultimate Bond villain. As the CEO of ExxonMobil, he was the chief architect of a decades-long disinformation campaign to discredit climate science and brainwash Americans into questioning the reality of climate change. For more than thirty years, he was also a lead figure on JPMorgan Chase’s board.

Last year, a broad coalition of groups (many of whom are a part of the Stop the Money Pipeline coalition) launched a campaign to oust Lee Raymond from Chase’s board. And they won. Just a few months after major investors joined with activists in calling for Raymond to get the boot, he was gone for good.

Now, an investor advocacy group, Majority Action, has released a list of 30 corporate directors who are obstacles to climate progress—directors who should be voted out of positions of power to make way for people who are more climate literate.

Not every one of those directors is a supervillain like Lee Raymond. Some of them are just everyday members of the 1%—the majority of them are wealthy, white men and all of them have a long track record of putting profits above all else. 

The Chairman of Wells Fargo’s board, Charles Noski, is a case in point. Noski hasn’t spent a significant portion of his career consorting with climate deniers. Yet, under Noski’s leadership, Wells Fargo has re-established itself as the world’s largest funder of fracking, doubled down on backing Line 3, and loaned billions to coal, oil, and gas companies. That alone is reason enough that he should be removed as the head of Wells Fargo’s board; he’s already proven himself incapable of leading a major corporation in the time of climate crisis.