Money Is the Oxygen on Which the Fire of Global Warming Burns - Bill McKibben, the New Yorker

[swag]

https://www.newyorker.com/news/daily-comment/money-is-the-oxygen-on-which-the-fire-of-global-warming-burns?fbclid=IwAR3YykG9JHf6pzQBqgnwt1z6o9f9bGh6lbPUh05kosC5UhLLcfpMu20Jl58

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This all could, in fact, become one of the final great campaigns of the climate movement—a way to focus the concerted power of any person, city, and institution with a bank account, a retirement fund, or an insurance policy on the handful of institutions that could actually change the game. We are indeed in a climate moment—people’s fear is turning into anger, and that anger could turn fast and hard on the financiers. If it did, it wouldn’t end the climate crisis: we still have to pass the laws that would actually cut the emissions, and build out the wind farms and solar panels. Financial institutions can help with that work, but their main usefulness lies in helping to break the power of the fossil-fuel companies.

Most of the N.G.O.s already at work taking on the banks and insurers, which include many indigenous-led and grassroots groups, are small; often they’ve had no choice but to focus their efforts on trying to block particular projects. (The vast Adani coal mine planned for eastern Australia has been a particular test, and at this point most of the world’s major banks and insurers have publicly announced that they’ll steer clear of involvement.) Imagine, instead, this financial fight becoming a fulcrum of the environmental-justice battle.

Even if that happened, victory is far from guaranteed. Persuading giant financial firms to give up even small parts of their business would be close to unprecedented. And inertia is a powerful force—there are whole teams of people in each of these firms who have spent years learning the fossil-fuel industry inside and out, so that they can lend, trade, and underwrite efficiently and profitably. Those people would have to learn about solar power, or electric cars. That would be hard, in the same way that it’s hard for coal miners to retrain to become solar-panel installers.

But we’re all going to have to change—that’s the point. Farmers around the world are leaving their land because the sea is rising; droughts are already creating refugees by the millions. On the spectrum of shifts that the climate crisis will require, bankers and investors and insurers have it easy. A manageably small part of their business needs to disappear, to be replaced by what comes next. No one should actually be a master of the universe. But, for the moment, the financial giants are the masters of our planet. Perhaps we can make them put that power to use. Fast.

[SeaTownBlue]

1. Only $$$ Can Solve Climate Change

Worlds richest 1% has 150 TRILLION. They could fix the planet and stay rich.

[Chalfont]

2. 0101

6&6¥)!&&:!!