Every dollar spent on fossil fuels pushes our climate further into chaos and violates human rights by supporting the extraction, pollution, and destruction of lives and communities. Bank of America has poured over $279 BILLION into the world’s worst fossil fuel companies since the Paris Agreement, and is one of the worst financiers of fossil infrastructure expansion in this time of crisis, making the bank complicit in this carnage.
That’s why hundreds of activists took to the streets of New York during Climate Week as part of the Wave to End Fossil Fuels and marched on Bank of America tower!
See the powerful action for yourself below:
Police arrested 20+ activists and Indigenous leaders
After marching together through Midtown Manhattan, we were greeted by dozens of police with barricades already set up outside Bank of America tower, blocking four out of five main entrances to the building. Clearly, they’d seen our flyers and were ready for us, but we were ready for them too! Dozens of brave individuals blockaded the remaining entrance of the tower, holding our “Defund Climate Chaos, Defend Human Rights” banner, chanting and holding their ground and power. The arrests that followed reflected one of the injustices of our time, where people are criminalized for speaking truth to power, while climate criminals are rewarded with wealth and privilege.
From Appalachia to the Philippines, frontline community leaders shared the impact of Bank of America’s dirty financing with the crowd
After the arrests, leaders from communities that Bank of America is complicit in harming spoke to the crowd, calling out the billions this bank continues to hand over to oil and gas projects and the companies behind them, including:
- Dr Crystal Cavalier-Keck of 7 Directions of Service and Russell Chisholm of Protect our Water, Rights, Heritage (POWHR) are resisting the Mountain Valley Pipeline (MVP), a planned 300-mile methane gas pipeline system in West Virginia and Virginia, and the 75-mile “Southgate” extension into North Carolina.
- Oluwatosin “Tosin” Kolawole of GreenFaith spoke about the East African Crude Oil Pipeline (EACOP), a planned 1,445 km crude oil pipeline across Uganda and Tanzania, that threatens farmlands, homes, protected ecosystems, and critical water sources for over 40 million people.
- Gerry Arances of the Center for Energy, Ecology, & Development (CEED), is leading a national coalition to Protect the Verde Island Passage and stop the Philippines from becoming the epicenter of fossil fuel expansion in Southeast Asia.
- John Beard of Port Arthur Community Action Network is fighting petrochemical expansion in the Gulf South, including the Port Arthur LNG export terminal.
- Bekah Hinojosa, an artist and activist from Brownsville, TX, is resisting methane gas expansion in the Gulf South, like Rio Grande LNG and Texas LNG in the Rio Grande Valley.
- Juan and Christa Mancias of the Carrizo Comecrudo Tribe of Texas are leading Indigenous resistance against fossil fuel expansion in the Gulf South, including Bank of America financed Space X, which has a launch facility that regularly puts flaming rockets over explosion-prone fossil fuel infrastructure in their backyard.
Bank of America is bankrolling the biggest fossil fuel build-out of our lifetimes: methane gas expansion
Methane (LNG) is a greenhouse gas touted by the fossil fuel industry as a “bridge” fuel to cleaner energy systems. But methane has 80 times more climate-warming potential than carbon dioxide over 20 years. Building these facilities takes years and billions of dollars, and each one locks us into decades more reliance on fossil fuels. Methane is also extremely volatile: a methane pipeline explodes every two days on average in the United States. Lastly, methane is toxic: People who live near LNG facilities deal with symptoms like headaches, dizziness, and respiratory irritation – with long-term exposure connected to severe health impacts like asthma, heart disease, and cancers.
Methane gas is the fastest-growing fossil fuel sector in the world. Right now, there are 25+ planned LNG export facilities for the US Gulf Coast alone, where people have already been dealing with the severe health and climate impacts of the petrochemical industry for decades. The Gulf is not a sacrifice zone; by supporting this build-out, Bank of America is financing environmental racism.
The Climate Crisis is a Human Rights Crisis
Fossil fuel infrastructure has deadly effects on local communities, and disproportionately so on communities of color, while extraction and pipeline projects often displace or harm lives and livelihoods around the world. What’s more, in this time of climate chaos, the financing of fossil fuel expansion is itself a mark of complicity in human rights violations. As one of the largest bankers of fossil fuels in the world — spending over $87 Billion on EXPANSION alone — Bank of America is just as guilty as the fossil fuel companies for the climate crisis, increasing climate disasters like hurricanes, fires, and floods, and the poisoning, violence, and displacement of communities that these projects operate in.
Bank of America has moved before — they’ll move again
We do what we do for a reason: because it works. We’ve seen it before, and we’ve seen it with Bank of America.
Bank of America was the first to restrict financing for mountaintop removal and has adopted some limited policies against coal. In this pivotal time for people and planet, we won’t stop the pressure until Bank of America ends all fossil fuel financing once and for all.
