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By Jo Nova
Banks are not only fleeing from the Net-Zero Bankers club, now they are abandoning their own Net Zero targets too, and in dumping them, we find out they never meant a damn thing anyway. It’s the complete disassembly of a plastic onion, every layer just a fake as the layer before.
But none of these news or investor outlets is even asking the right questions — why did anyone think banks wanted to save the world? How did it ever make sense to pretend that banking institutions were going to turn themselves into Global Angels, fixing the weather, harrassing their clients to switch to paper bags, and turning down loans for coal miners?
It’s all unravelling now: Wells Fargo is the first major US bank to abandon its own Net Zero Target for both 2030 and 2050. And why would they do that? Probably because Tennessee and 17 other Republican States were investigating them for fiduciary duty and cartel type behaviour. Wells Fargo abandoned its targets a few weeks ago, and today The US Republican state consortium abandoned their investigation” of Wells Fargo. They’re still investigating other bankers.
“Attorney General Jonathan Skrmetti of Tennessee said in a statement on Thursday that he commended Well Fargo’s decision to step away from “utopian” policymaking.” — Bloomberg
The Responsible Investor (poor thing) says Wells Fargo is the first major US bank to abandon its commitment to the uber fashionable Net Zero target. But Mika Morse laments, it was a big nothing-burger all along. The banks just assumed that they’d get to Net Zero because the whole economy would.
The bankers were just coming along for a free ride:
The Net Zero Mirage — why banks are abandoning climate promises
Mika Morse
After each one, climate advocates, the press, and others will condemn their cowardice in the face of political headwinds.
But… Banks net-zero commitments were a mirage from the outset.
Despite what the greenhawk promoters would have you believe, banks with Net Zero targets didn’t change a thing:
Research from Europe suggests that banks with net-zero commitments do not make any meaningful changes in their lending or engagement with their borrowers to reduce emissions, compared to banks without net-zero commitments.
As JP Morgan says in their 2024 Climate Report — “We don’t boycott”, “We believe in free enterprise” and “We want to compete” — which means they’re not saying no to funding an oil rig if there is a profit in it, thank you.
The research report went on to say “. Net zero banks do not divest from polluting sectors (Figure 1), nor do they scale up project financing for renewable power projects (Figure 2).” The trend lines are the same for the green pretender banks as for the rest. (Click to enlarge).
Global governance is shifting . The banks are just following the levers of power.