Are the banks waking up to climate change?

 By fotdmike

The Camp for Climate Action outside the headquarters of Royal Bank of Scotland in Edinburgh does not so far seem to have shifted the subsidised bank in a more greener direction.

They are still subsidising the polluting business of extracting oil from tar sands, just as they are financing the oil and gas extraction that is accelerating global warming – and just as they were before the bank nosedived. 

But the New York Times reports that the campaigns against this kind of banking in the USA are beginning to bear some fruit.  

Wells Fargo is the latest bank to shift its policy against financing mining companies that want to remove whole mountaintops to reach coal.

Wells Fargo are not a big player in the field, but banks like Credit Suisse, Morgan Stanley, JPMorgan Chase and Bank of America is also reviewing their support for mining companies removing mountaintops.  HSBC is beginning to end some relationships with palm oil producers.

None of this is a new dawn.  The Carbon Principles, formulated by Citigroup, JPMorgan Chase and Morgan Stanley, are not the solution to global warming, any more than HSBC’s Climate Principles are.  There is no suggestion that even the worst and most destructive mining companies will be denied finance anywhere.

But it is the beginning of a realisation by banks – some of the slowest learners about global issues – that financing climate change is likely to be an increasing problem in the future, even if it is only a threat to their reputations.

It isn’t a change of heart, but it is maybe a symptom of change to come.