Flux continu

The nation’s top banks are quietly advising their clients on how to build a financial life raft — or perhaps life yacht — from the wreckage of runaway climate change. Make no mistake: The forecasts coming from Wall Street’s leading financial institutions are bleak. But they also point their clients to potential profit-making opportunities from the havoc spreading across the planet, writes Corbin Hiar.

Morgan Stanley, JPMorgan and an international banking group have quietly concluded that climate change will likely exceed the Paris Agreement’s 2 degree goal.Top Wall Street institutions are preparing for a severe future of global warming that blows past the temperature limits agreed to by more than 190 nations a decade ago, industry documents show.

This report focuses on the 20 investors and 20 banks that are funding the methane generating activities of 15 of the leading meat and dairy companies worldwide. Collectively these financial institutions fund a methane footprint that could exceed 503 Mt CO2e – nearly as big as the CO2emissions of Saudi Arabia.

A carbon bomb is any fossil fuel extraction project that will generate more than one gigatonne of carbon dioxide (1GtCO2) over its remaining life.

Since the Paris Agreement in 2016, the world’s 60 largest private banks financed fossil fuels with USD $6.9 trillion. Nearly half – $3.3 trillion – went towards fossil fuel expansion. In 2023, banks financed $705 billion in fossil fuel financing with $347 billion going to fossil fuel expansion alone.

A focus on economic stability in the near-term makes the climate crisis worse in the long-term.

Higher rates slow the renewable energy transition and shield oil and gas producers from competition by low-carbon producers

Gekweekte kelp, een zeewier, kan helpen om stikstofverontreiniging in kustwateren aan te pakken. Dat blijkt uit nieuw onderzoek van de Universiteit van Alaska Fairbanks.

Dat financiële instellingen mee verantwoordelijk zijn voor mensenrechtenschendingen, klimaatverandering en natuurvernietiging is bekend, schrijft MO*ontwikkelaar Wies Willems. Het is dan ook wraakroepend dat de sector erin slaagt om te ontsnappen aan nieuwe Europese duurzaamheidsregels.

US and UK financial institutions have been among the leading investors in Russian “carbon bomb” fossil fuel projects, according to a new database of holdings from recent years.