The coal industry is trying to move forward with a deal that would threaten Australia’s treasured Great Barrier Reef and turbocharge climate change—but they can’t do it without major financial backing. Three of the biggest Wall Street investment banks have said they won’t fund the deal.1 But Bank of America won’t commit to staying away.
Tell Bank of America—don’t finance the destruction of the Great Barrier Reef!
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Right now, the coal industry is pushing an incredibly destructive plan: to build out one of the biggest coal ports in the world right in the middle of the Great Barrier Reef. A huge corporation called Adani is attempting to dredge 3 million cubic meters of seabed, wrecking part of the biggest stretch of coral reef in the world and one of the planet’s most biodiverse ecosystems.
The Great Barrier Reef is home to thousands of species, including the endangered Green Sea Turtle, and it’s a crucial area for humpback whales giving birth and raising their young. Expanding Abbot Point coal terminal and massively increasing dangerous coal ship traffic would put a global treasure—in fact, a protected World Heritage Site—at grave risk.
It would also cook the climate. The coal industry wants to build out Abbot Point so it can dig new mega-mines in a vast reserve called the Galilee Basin. That would double coal production in Australia, already the world’s second-biggest coal exporter. Unbelievably, in the midst of a climate emergency, Bank of America is considering bankrolling a carbon time-bomb on the scale of the Alberta tar sands.
Without the backing of major financial institutions, this deal cannot go ahead. Tell Bank of America to stay away from the Abbot Point coal port expansion.
For the last two months, RAN has been working behind the scenes, asking the biggest Wall Street investment banks to commit to not finance reef and climate destruction. An international coalition of environmental groups has joined the fight, and tens of thousands of you added your voices to a petition calling on Wall Street to stay away from this reckless deal.
Your pressure is working! In the last three weeks, we’ve won public commitments from three of the biggest Wall Street banks—Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan Chase, and Citigroup—to not finance the Abbot Point terminal expansion.
But Bank of America is still holding out. Tell them to commit: don’t fund a deal that would wreck the Great Barrier Reef and cook the climate!