Environmental campaigners in New York have kept up a campaign of direct action against one of the city’s foremost banking empires, Citi, accusing the group of fueling the climate crisis.
Enraged by Citi’s bankrolling of polluting businesses, activists have unleashed a “summer of heat” campaign that includes protests and leafleting, coupled with an online pressure campaign. Every week, dozens of protesters gather at Citigroup’s gleaming headquarters in Lower Manhattan to demand it change its fossil fuel investments policy, following in the footsteps of European campaigners who did the same with eurozone banking giants.
Nearly 600 people have been arrested at the New York protests and sit-ins so far.
Photo: Reuters
In June four activist groups — Climate Organizing Hub, New York Communities for Change, Planet Over Profit and Stop the Money Pipeline — created the campaign against Citi, in conjunction with dozens of other groups.
“We met with them for years, and you just felt like we were getting nowhere,” said protest organizer Jonathan Westin who vowed to keep up the campaign until Citi changes course.
“We felt like we had to bring it to their doorstep,” he added.
Oil and gas exploration in the Arctic, Amazon and seabed alongside thermal power plants, coal mines and liquid natural gas plants have received more than US$6.9 trillion from banks since 2016.
Last year, the world’s 60 largest banks committed US$750 billion to fossil fuels, according to a report by non-governmental organizations Rainforest Action Network, Reclaim Finance and others.
Finance is one of the planks underpinning polluting energy alongside government permits and insurance to guarantee the projects.
US finance giants JP Morgan Chase, Citi and Bank of America lead the pack.
“Citi is the second worst funder of dirty energy projects in the world from 2016 to 2023, spending a total of US$396.3 billion on coal, oil and gas,” the report said.
Protester Laura Esther Wolfson said the battle against fossil fuel financing would not be “a one-day fight.” “The civil rights struggle lasted years, what we cannot do is sit back and do nothing,” she said.
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