This came in by email on January 1.

Official Statement from Allison Fajans-Turner, Bank Engagement and Policy Lead, Rainforest Action Network:

“America’s largest banks are making a New Year’s resolution to turn back on their climate promises, disgracefully ending 2024 — a year marred by continued bank funding for fossil fuel expansion and policy backtracking — by exiting the Net Zero Banking Alliance for Net Zero (NZBA). Citibank and Bank of America withdrew from NZBA in the waning hours of 2024, a trend started by Wells Fargo and Goldman Sachs on the eve of the holiday season. To JP Morgan Chase and any other U.S. bank considering defecting, RAN reiterates its statement from before the break that leaving the alliance will be seen as an irresponsible and climate hostile act.

RAN, along with many other climate finance campaigning NGOs, sent a letter to the NZBA and GFANZ advisory bodies urging the Alliance to call out defecting members. We are disappointed that instead, GFANZ has purportedly decided to weaken itself by clarifying its role as an advisory body rather than one that would hold its members to scientific standards. These moves, made when most of us are distracted by the holidays, show just how ashamed banks are of their unpopular decisions to backtrack on their climate commitments. If U.S. mega-banks are unwilling to be bound by even the loose requirements of international voluntary associations, then it is all the more imperative that national and state level governments get serious about regulating the banking sector. Otherwise, we all face the devastation of a bursting carbon bubble that has trillions of dollars in underpriced climate risk.”

We at Green Energy Times ask our readers to check on their banks, find out what they are doing, and stop supporting them if they are acting inappropriately.