Deidre Fulton writes—Big Bank 'Greenwashing' Exposed as Major Climate Week Sponsors Fund Fossil Fuels:
Big bank sponsorship of Climate Week 2016, which kicked off Monday in New York City, "amounts to little more than greenwashing," according one environmental organization, given financial institutions' business-as-usual investment in fossil fuels.
Indeed, Rainforest Action Network (RAN) charges three major sponsors—Bank of America, JP Morgan Chase, and Bank of the West (BNP Paribas)—with "helping [to] drive the climate crisis" through their ongoing funding of extreme fossil fuels such as coal and tar sands oil.
Citing its own 2016 report, Shorting the Climate, which was released in June, RAN notes that between 2013 and 2015, those three entities put $9.89 billion into coal mining companies, $30.7 billion into the largest coal power producers, $74.91 billion into companies building LNG export terminals in North America, and $77.3 billion into companies exposed to extreme oil. Furthermore, among the 25 major global banks analyzed in Shorting the Climate, JPMorgan Chase was the number one investor in two extreme fossil fuel subsectors: liquified natural gas (LNG) export terminals and extreme oil.
Bank of America is a "Platinum Sponsor" of Climate Week, while JP Morgan Chase and Bank of the West are listed as "Affiliate" and "Supporting" sponsors, respectively.
"Given their current investments in climate-wrecking activities, their sponsorship of 'Climate Week NYC' amounts to little more than greenwashing," said RAN climate and energy program director Amanda Starbuck on Monday. "If these banks aspire to be climate leaders, they must accelerate their exit from coal, and commit to getting out of extreme oil and fracked-gas terminals as well."
Climate group 350.org separately took Bank of America to task on Monday for "playing a key role in financing dangerous fossil fuel infrastructure like the Dakota Access Pipeline"—even as it announces "new environmental operations goals" such as moving to 100 percent renewable electricity by 2020. [...]
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At Daily Kos on this date in 2012—Scott Brown adds another line to his resume:
Sen. Scott Brown is a very important man, and at Thursday night's debate with Elizabeth Warren, he added another resume item you might not have known about. Not only does Brown meet secretly with kings and queens, not only does Secretary of State Hillary Clinton call him all the time, but he's also "one of the ranking members on the Armed Services Committee."
This has the benefit of being a step or two closer to the truth than his claim that Hillary Clinton calls him "all the time" when they'd spoken twice, and not in more than a year. But a step or two closer to the truth still puts it about five steps from reality. There's one ranking member on the Senate Armed Services Committee, and that's John McCain. You'd have to spread the idea of ranking members, plural, pretty thin to get to Scott Brown, who is the sixth Republican member on the committee.
Brown is the ranking member on the Subcommittee on Airland, but with 68 subcommittees in the Senate as a whole, being a subcommittee ranking member is not exactly a unique identifier.
On today’s Kagro in the Morning show: From the dumpster fire of Trump’s birther “presser,” to the dumpster explosion in NYC. Greg Dworkin & Armando debate the FL polls. Pence named Cheney as his VP role model, but what choice did he have? Republican friendships shatter over Trump. (onoz!)
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