Europe’s central bank sets foot on a path towards a fossil free future
The European Central Bank’s new strategy sends a clear signal to banks and businesses around the world: the era of fossil finance is coming to an end.
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End fossil finance!
It’s simple — to prevent devastating climate breakdown, we have to end all finance to fossil fuels.
Public and private banks pour hundreds of billions of euros each year into the climate-wrecking fossil industry. We need to urgently work together to stop fossil finance through sustained public organising and people power.
WHY FOSSIL FINANCE?
Vast sums of money are flowing out of Europe to support fossil fuel projects in Asia, Africa and Latin America, trashing the environment and trampling on human rights. The profits flows back to Europe and into the pockets of millionaire executives and shareholders.
This is what European colonialism looks like in the 21st century.
It’s simple — to prevent devastating climate breakdown, we have to end all finance to fossil fuels.
How much time have you got?
KEY TARGETS & CAMPAIGNS
This is what we’ve been working on.
START TAKING ACTION
If there are no active climate groups where you live, you can set up your own group and start organising to take action. This video shows you how, in five easy steps:
RESOURCES TO TAKE ACTION
To really challenge the financial industry, we need powerful campaigns. 350.org has a wealth of resources to help you assemble healthy groups, craft powerful actions, and achieve meaningful change.
Still want more to read? Check out the excellent Climate Resistance Handbook for a comprehensive guide to taking climate action.
Or visit the 350.org Trainings hub for a truly overwhelming (we warned you!) number of online guides, trainings and resources.
WHAT ARE EUROPE’S BANKS REALLY FUNDING?
Fracking in Argentina
Fracking is banned in most of Europe, so European oil corporations Shell and Total, and HSBC and Deutsche Bank, took their dirty business to Vaca Muerta, Argentina. There, they exploit some of the biggest shale oil and gas reserves in the world. Fracking is destroying the environment and threatening the indigenous Mapuche people’s ancestral land and livelihood, despite their fierce opposition.
Shell and Total have both benefited from the European Central Bank’s bond-buying programme fueled with Covid-19 economic recovery funds.
Drilling in the Amazon
Shell was one of the fossil fuel companies that took part in an auction in Brazil in December, looking to buy the rights to drill on land held by indigenous communities and in some of the world’s most important environmental areas, including the Amazon rainforest. These projects trample on indigenous rights, destroy vulnerable ecosystems, and will further fuel the climate crisis.
Shell is one of several European fossil fuel companies that have benefitted from the European Central Bank’s bond-buying programme, which has been scaled up in response to the Covid19 pandemic.
Gas in Mozambique
The French oil giant Total is a driving force behind a fossil gas mega-project in Mozambique, alongside European banks like HSBC and BNP Paribas. It has already contributed to an increase in corruption and human rights abuses in the region, in addition to its impact on the climate crisis. While the negative impacts of the project will be mostly felt by communities in Mozambique, the profits will flow to rich shareholders in the global North.
The European Central Bank has been supporting Total through its Covid19 response programme, meaning that public money which should be helping countries recover from the pandemic is instead helping to fuel dangerous projects like this.
Oil in East Africa
Total is the company behind the East Africa Crude Oil Pipeline – a mega-project to extract and transport oil for export. Other than filling Total executives’ pockets with dirty profits, the construction of the pipeline will displace local communities in Uganda and Tanzania, destroy protected natural reserves, wreck farmlands and local people’s lives and livelihoods, contaminate local water sources and further fuel the burning climate crisis.
All this with the support of European Central Bank’s Covid-19 recovery funding, some of which has benefited Total through ECB’s unrestricted bond buying programme.
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Flamethrowers and glaciers… at the European Central Bank
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