Climate Change Denialist Funders' Leaked Report Absolutely Confirms Climate Change
I meant to write this weeks ago but got waylaid. This, in my opinion, is massive.
A report has recently been leaked from bank JP Morgan who themselves have spent decades funding organisations seeking to spread denial and disinformation regarding climate change. They are the world's largest financier of fossil fuels. In short, they are climate change denial facilitators.
You can see why the bank might not have wanted it leaked. It was a wholly independent report and "not a commentary" on the company:
The JP Morgan report on the economic risks of human-caused global heating said climate policy had to change or else the world faced irreversible consequences.
The study implicitly condemns the US bank’s own investment strategy and highlights growing concerns among major Wall Street institutions about the financial and reputational risks of continued funding of carbon-intensive industries, such as oil and gas.
JP Morgan has provided $75bn (£61bn) in financial services to the companies most aggressively expanding in sectors such as fracking and Arctic oil and gas exploration since the Paris agreement, according to analysis compiled for the Guardian last year....
The research by JP Morgan economists David Mackie and Jessica Murray says the climate crisis will impact the world economy, human health, water stress, migration and the survival of other species on Earth.
“We cannot rule out catastrophic outcomes where human life as we know it is threatened,” notes the paper, which is dated 14 January....
The authors say policymakers need to change direction because a business-as-usual climate policy “would likely push the earth to a place that we haven’t seen for many millions of years”, with outcomes that might be impossible to reverse.
“Although precise predictions are not possible, it is clear that the Earth is on an unsustainable trajectory. Something will have to change at some point if the human race is going to survive.”
The investment bank says climate change “reflects a global market failure in the sense that producers and consumers of CO2 emissions do not pay for the climate damage that results.” To reverse this, it highlights the need for a global carbon tax but cautions that it is “not going to happen anytime soon” because of concerns about jobs and competitiveness.
The authors say it is “likely the [climate] situation will continue to deteriorate, possibly more so than in any of the IPCC’s scenarios”.
Without naming any organisation, the authors say changes are occurring at the micro level, involving shifts in behaviour by individuals, companies and investors, but this is unlikely to be enough without the involvement of the fiscal and financial authorities. [source]
Divestment seems to be the order of the day and topical - getting huge investment conglomerates not to invest in, or to get rid of present investments in, environmentally problematic corporations and sectors. The article concludes:
Pressure from student strikers, activist shareholders and divestment campaigners has prompted several major institutions to claim they will make the climate more of a priority. The business model of fossil fuel companies is also weakening as wind and solar become more competitive. Earlier this month, the influential merchant bank Goldman Sachs downgraded ExxonMobil from a “neutral” to a “sell” position. In January, BlackRock – the world’s biggest asset manager – said it would lower its exposure to fossil fuels ahead of a “significant reallocation of capital”.
Environmental groups remain wary because huge sums are invested in petrochemical firms, but some veteran financial analysts say the tide is changing. The CNBC money pundit Jim Cramer shocked many in his field when he declared: “I’m done with fossil fuels. They’re done. They’re just done.” Describing how a new generation of pension fund managers was withdrawing support, he claimed oil and gas firms were in the death knell phase. “The world has turned on them. It’s actually happening kind of quickly. You’re seeing divestiture by a lot of different funds. It’s going to be a parade that says, ‘Look, these are tobacco. And we’re not going to own them,’” he said. “We’re in a new world.”
Following hot on the footsteps of this article, JP Morgan then announced it was reducing support for some fossil fuels (though not nearly enough by a country mile):
JP Morgan will aim to offer $200bn (£153bn) in environmental and economic development deals to help support clean energy and other sustainable projects instead.
JP Morgan’s green pledges put the bank on a par with Goldman Sachs which became the first large US bank to rule out future financing of oil drilling or exploration in the Arctic and in new mines for thermal coal.
But environmental groups said the bank’s green pledges were dwarfed by its huge financial support for fossil fuels. JP Morgan has provided $75bn in financial support to expand shale fracking, and Arctic oil and gas exploration since the Paris climate agreement.
Too little, too late? Probably:
JP Morgan’s climate strategy is expected to fall short of the green pledges announced by BlackRock, the world’s largest hedge fund, which will cut companies that rely on thermal coal for more than a quarter of their revenues from its actively managed portfolios.
JP Morgan’s coal finance restrictions will apply to companies whose primary business is coal mining, but could allow a loophole to continue financing conglomerates that earn less than half of their revenue from coal.
Jeanne Martin, a campaigner at the investment charity ShareAction, said JP Morgan’s climate pledges were an “anticlimax” but proved that “even the world’s largest fossil fuel financier has no choice but to listen to its shareholders and civil society on climate change”....
ShareAction, which promotes responsible investing, said JP Morgan’s new policy “is at best an anticlimax and at worst dangerously omissive of a huge part of the coal market”.
Martin said: “If the world was waiting for JP Morgan to move meaningfully on its funding of the climate crisis after warning that human life ‘as we know it’ could be threatened by climate change, it will be sorely disappointed.”
When an organisation like this has an internal report of this magnitude, then it's probably time for deniers to sit up and take notice.
They won't, of course. ostriches struggle to unostrich.
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