Banks banks ba-doom-bish banks

Regular readers are probably bored of me beating the “just switch to an ethical bank!” drum, but I’m not likely to ease up on that one (sorry not sorry 😜).

If you also subscribe to Seth Godin’s Carbon Almanac daily email, you would’ve seen the news item they shared the other day about Cambridge University refusing donations from fossil fuelers like Shell and BP, who’ve collectively donated about £20 million since 2016.

A big deal and a great statement from the University, but the bigger story in my opinion was further down, where Cambridge – along with 20 other UK universities – are threatening to move all of their money from big banks unless they drop all funding for new oil and gas projects.

That’s billions of pounds (or dollars, or whatever).

That’d sting because big banks use the money that belongs to universities, businesses, and regular people, to invest in whatever the hell they want. In Aus, all of the big 4 banks fund oil and gas projects.

Quick numbers:

• There are over 100 banks in Australia.
• The big 4 banks – CommBank, ANZ, NAB and Westpac – are all openly funding billions of dollars towards new fossil fuel projects
• Other big names you’ll recognise – HSBC, Macquarie Bank, ING, and others – are even bigger funders of fossil fuel projects by several multiples
• More than half of the banks in Aus do not fund fossil fuel projects

Moving your money to any of those 50+ other banks does 2 things:

• Ensures your own money is clean for the foreseeable future
• Jumps on a bandwagon that more and more folks are jumping on – including some of the most recognisable universities in the world. People sometimes follow bandwagons (👈 important!)

Here’s my drum solo:

Switching banks is the lowest effort, biggest impact move any person, business, organisation, or institution can make in the climate battle.

Switch today; Clean tomorrow.

Ba-doom-bish! 🥁

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_{Uni’s threaten to ditch banks article}

_{Numbers and bank info from marketforces.org.au}