Fossil fuels

What do you think your annual carbon footprint might be?  Maybe around the UK average of 8-9 tonnes. But what if you took into account the emissions resulting from the investments of the bank where your money is? That would give quite a different picture...

If you’re an RBS customer it would give the picture below (we could have also done this calculation for other high street banks like HSBC, Lloyds and Barclays, who also invest heavily in fossil fuels, and probably come up with similarly striking results).

If this picture shocks you, why not have a go at our mini-quiz and see whether you can guess how many times greater the emissions resulting from RBS’s loans to fossil fuel companies are than the entire emissions of Scotland, where the bank is headquartered. 

Or come on our 'Scandalous Edinburgh plc' walking tour where we'll really be bringing our Carbon Capital campaign to life with humour, real life stories and more eye opening facts.  ...

Picture this. You’re standing on the north side of the Millennium Bridge (the ‘wobbly’ footbridge) in London, looking south.  To your left towers the Shard, in front of you is the Tate, to your right are the Houses of Parliament and the Shell Centre and behind you is the City of London.  

And then, the stories begin. Traditional tales of the people of the arctic from Siberia to Canada, from Alaska to Greenland, tales of polar bears and narwhals, caribou and whales, elks and geese. There are tales of animals helping people, people turning into animals, women marrying animals, people learning to live in balance with nature. 

And other stories too. Stories of the ways in which the City of London is driving climate change through providing finance for fossil fuel companies, stories of fossil fuel funding of the arts and stories of resistance and protest- be it the Greenpeace activists climbing the Shard to protest against arctic drilling, the Reclaim Tate actions against BP’s sponsorship of the Tate gallery, the Occupy London camp of 2011 or the Climate Camp occupation of Bishopsgate when the G20 was in town.

I am a storyteller with Gearshift Theatre and climate activist and will be joining others – including Richard Solly, Co-ordinator of the...

This morning, staff from aptly named investment management company ‘BlackRock’ arrived at their swanky London offices to be greeted by waiters holding silver trays, laden with what looked like luxury chocolates. As people approached to take our Carbon Rocher, they were disappointed to find they were actually being offered lumps of coal.

Our aim in handing out coal in the City of London was to make the point that the wealth generated by London-based companies through investments in new coal power stations brings devastation to communities around the world. 

We organised this morning’s demonstration outside BlackRock to coincide with a march of a thousand people to the Johannesburg offices of London-listed Anglo American, organised by South African social movement Earthlife. The march marked the beginning of what’s likely to be a string of protests around a proposed new power station in Limpopo Province. South Africa. The proposed site for this power station is just kilometres away from a number of communities, including one large town, Lephalale. 

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       An image of the infographic at www.twoenergyfutures.org

Most people in the world prefer renewable energy to fossil fuels or nuclear power. This is what the opinion polls tell us, again and again, and it's why communities are standing up to fossil fuel  extraction projects and pushing for cleaner alternatives all over the world.

That’s all very well, say the fossil fuel proponents, and of course we all want clean energy eventually, but for now we need coal, oil and gas because renewables just can’t fill the energy gap, right? Burning carbon is just a necessary evil, so we've just got no choice to extract those tar sands, or frack that national park, or drill...

It was AGM time again last Saturday as the World Development Movement hosted their annual meeting and conference in Leeds. The conference theme was timely, entitled 'Not the G8: A real agenda for global justice', two days before the G8 meeting started in Northern Ireland. There was a vibrant mix of attendees from long time supporters and WDM group members from all over the country, to local university students and lecturers.

There was a great line up of speakers. We hosted the personable Raj Patel, author of Stuffed and Starved; Dorothy-Grace Guerrero, the climate justice programme co-ordinator for Focus on the Global South who travelled all the way from the Thailand; and self confessed geek, anti-austerity and debt campaigner Luís Bernardo from Attac Portugal. Further contributors to our workshops were Ray Bush, professor of African studies and development politics at the University of Leeds; Richard Solly, co-ordinator of the London Mining Network; Matti Kohonen from the Tax Justice Network...

We have already revealed that the HSBC is funding £75 billion worth of fossil fuel projects worldwide. And it is no secret that these projects are not only the cause of the displacement of entire villages and local environmental degradation – but also of accelerating CO2 emissions that are already causing catastrophic changes to the climate. What remains a secret is the level of CO2 emissions HSBC is responsible for through its funding of companies and fossil fuel projects.

You don’t have to search for long to find examples of devastating consequences of projects funded by HSBC money. Just take a look at the Niger Delta in Nigeria where Shell’s presence as the biggest and most destructive multinational oil corporation is devastating the local environment, breaking human rights, and providing no benefits for the local environment.

Look at the mining of tar sands in Canada which has not only destroyed vast amount of lands and displaced local communities – as the world’s biggest industrial project, it also has the capacity to emit twice as much CO2 as has been emitted in human history so far.

Or take a look at Madagascar where Total oil has secured the rights for mining even more tar sand despite the catastrophic consequences this will have for local...

Yesterday morning in central London was a morning like any other. It was a morning of world leaders and business executives developing new ways of destroying our planet for profit. But it was also a morning of an increasingly global protest against greed and environmental destruction.

Basically yesterday morning it all came down to this: The US government is reviewing plans to construct the ‘Keystone XL’ pipeline that will transport monstrous amounts of oil from Canadian tar sands through the US. If this happens, a handful of people will become immensely rich – while thousands will see their homes destroyed and millions if not billions will be affected by the resulting catastrophic climate change.

The tar sands project is the largest industrial project in human history and it has the potential of emitting twice as much CO2 as has been released so far in human history. It is moving beyond breaking records to breaking our planet. In Canada, where the tar sands are extracted, things look even bleaker. Immense areas of land are destroyed, water sources are polluted, and the indigenous population face health risks and displacement.

That is why I, along with nearly 100 other people,...

One third of ministers in the UK government, including top cabinet ministers, are linked to the UK finance and energy companies fuelling climate change, a new report from the World Development Movement reveals today.

The anti-poverty campaign group has condemned the ‘finance-energy complex’ at the heart of government, and is calling on the government to force UK banks and finance companies to publish the carbon emissions released by the fossil fuel projects they fund.

Fossil fuel companies are worth £900 billion on the London Stock Exchange, and the top five UK banks underwrote £170 billion in bonds and share issues for fossil fuel companies between 2010 and 2012.

Top cabinet ministers including William Hague, Vince Cable, George Osborne and Michael Gove have links with big finance, oil and coal companies that are driving climate change.

Foreign secretary William Hague, who used to work for Shell, helped Tullow Oil get out of paying a £175 million tax bill in Uganda, one of the world’s poorest countries. Mr Hague made a personal phone call to the Ugandan president on Tullow Oil’s behalf.

Vince Cable, secretary of state for business and skills and...

The Rio+20 Earth Summit has been deservedly derided as a dismal failure. Industrialised countries refused to commit to allocating a single additional penny to help poorer countries move towards a green economy, and the final agreement was nothing more than a reaffirmation of previous commitments.

Nick Clegg, who headed the UK delegation in Rio, was clear about who he blamed for the failure. No, it wasn’t the oil and gas lobbyists, nor the fossil fuel addicted governments of the industrialised world.

It was the poor.

According to Clegg, Rio failed because developing countries were “antagonistic” towards the EU’s plan to build a green economy.

This is rich indeed given that the UK government, alongside the rest of the EU, blocked almost every progressive proposal coming from the developing world during the pre-summit negotiations.

The G77 – a group of 131 developing countries – went to Rio calling on the industrialised world to commit to providing additional funding to help the world’s poorest countries develop on a sustainable basis. Thanks to the truly antagonistic stance of Clegg and his counterparts in Europe and North...

Guest blog post by Oscar Reyes, writer and activist on climate and energy finance, and associate fellow at the Institute for Policy Studies

Given how backwards the Rio Summit’s priorities were, it's hardly surprising that negotiations ended before they began. But a slow swarm of black ministerial limousines has crawled across Rio regardless, with Ministers, Presidents and Prime Ministers queuing up to talk the language of sustainability, while mostly advancing corporate interests. It came to a close yesterday with the adoption of a final  declaration called, without hint of irony, "The Future We Want."
The Rio declaration contains 283 paragraphs of blank prose that "reaffirms," "notes," and "acknowledges" a long shopping list of activities, but "commits" to virtually nothing. There is no program of action, figures, dates, targets, nothing at all that locks countries into taking action. It is a political non-event that turgidly regurgitates some of the sustainability-speak of the original Rio conference 20 years ago, with none of its ambition.

Despite that, there are a few straws for optimists to clutch at. The most significant-sounding, from an...

Ahead of the Rio+20 summit, Asian social movements have put together this statement on the fake Green Economy being pushed at the talks. It also outlines what they will be calling for at the summit.

Fight for Our Future! No Price on Nature!
 
We are movements and organizations from Asia, waging struggles on various fronts and arenas to defend our rights, resist policies and projects that cause harm and destruction, and to fight for immediate priorities and demands, as well as profound transformation of our societies.
 
We envision a social and economic system:

• that is aimed at providing for the needs of people and aspirations for a humane, empowering and liberating life in a manner that respects the earth’s capacity to regenerate, and to sustain life based on the integrity of natural systems;

• that is based on and promotes equity, parity, solidarity and mutual respect among people and nations regardless of gender, race, ethnicity, culture, capabilities and class;

• that promotes sharing of land, water, forests, atmosphere, eco-systems and territories  based on the principles of stewardship and not private ownership, and the rights of all people to equitable and responsible...

WDM today welcomed the Scottish government's announcement of the setting up of a ‘climate justice fund’ for climate adaptation in developing countries, but warned that the scale of climate injustice suffered by countries in the south means that the SNP's £9 million manifesto pledge for the fund must be increased.

 Liz Murray, head of Scottish campaigns for the World Development Movement said:

“We welcome the Scottish government’s announcement of its ‘climate justice fund’ and its acknowledgement that Scotland owes a huge climate debt to the world’s poorest people.  Scotland got rich on fossil fuel energy at the expense of poorer countries who are now suffering the impacts of climate change.   And on a planet with limited capacity to absorb carbon, the rich world has left the rest of the world with little room to take the same development path. But the scale of climate injustice should not be underestimated, and if Scotland is going to make a fair contribution then the SNP government’s manifesto pledge of £9 million for this fund must be increased.

Cutting emissions here in Scotland is also a vital part of ensuring climate justice. That means the Scottish government must say no to a new coal-fired power station at Hunterston, to...

Whilst rich countries are responsible for most of the emissions pumped into the atmosphere it is the poorest communities in the world that are being hit the hardest by climate change. But rather than providing compensation for causing climate change rich countries are using it to trap the world’s poor into new and dangerous climate debt. WDM is campaigning for climate justice for developing countries.

Miriam Ross, media officer

The World Development Movement has signed an open letter sent today to the organisers of London 2012, asking them to reconsider the games’ sponsorship deal with BP.

The Olympic chiefs’ claim that this summer’s games will be the ‘greenest ever’ has already taken a serious battering, not least over sponsorship by Dow, the company behind the Bhopal disaster. Dow’s involvement in the games prompted the resignation of one the games’ sustainability commissioners last month.

BP has been selected as ‘Sustainability Partner’ for the games, despite being, as the letter points out, ‘one of the least sustainable companies on earth’. The list of the company’s environmental and human rights crimes is a long one, including the Deepwater Horizon disaster and formerly close relationships with the Mubarak regime in Egypt and the Gaddafi regime in Libya.

Now BP plans to enter the highly polluting Canadian tar sands, despite calls from local indigenous communities in Alberta for a halt to tar sands extraction projects. The World Development Movement has also been highlighting the role of bailed-out bank RBS in...

It’s heartening to hear that President Obama has stood up to Big Oil by rejecting the permit for the Keystone XL tar sands oil pipeline sought by Canadian oil firm TransCanada. The reason given was that the project is not in the national interest. The pipeline was planned to carry tar sands oil more than 2,000 miles from Alberta in Canada to the oil refineries and ports in Texas. A huge campaign from indigenous activists, environmentalists, farmers, ranchers and youth climate activists was run against the project, and American citizens submitted more than 250,000 public comments against the proposal. 

This is good news. While it is still possible for TransCanada to reapply for the permit to build the pipeline, it must surely be a major blow to the tars sands industry in Canada, which needs to be able to get the oil out of Canada if it is to be economically viable.  

But the tar sands industry has to be stopped. Tar sands are one of the most polluting sources of fossil fuel, threatening water supplies and land locally when it is extracted and threatening the climate when it is burned. 

We’re linked here in the UK to the tar sands project by the global...

Kirsty Wright, Climate justice campaigner writes from Durban

Alongside the UN climate talks, over the past two weeks, Durban’ KZN university has hosted a ‘people’s space’, an alternative space where people could come together to talk about the struggle for climate justice. Bringing together activists from across the world, the space has seen some fascinating exchanges, where people have shared what climate justice means in the context of their own lives, and to take on the complicated web of systemic issues that need to be tackled on the pathway for climate justice.

Whilst the mantra for many concerned citizens in the UK is to reduce energy consumption, a key demand for activists is for their right to energy access to be met. Here in South Africa, and across the continent, energy access is a vital part of struggle for climate justice. The statistics remain shocking: in urban Africa nearly three-quarters of the population have no access to energy. In rural Africa, that figure is a phenomenal ninety-four percent of people who have no access to the energy they need to drill for water, power hospitals, and cook food. Yet, in a twisted misfortune of geography, Africa is warming faster than the rest of the planet, and its people are already experiencing...

In Climate loan sharks, the World Development Movement and the Jubilee Debt Campaign reveal that the UK is pushing $1.1 billion of climate loans, via the World Bank, on some of the poorest countries in the world.

For example Grenada’s debt is already 90 per cent of GDP, yet it is to be lent a further $22 million, over 3 per cent of the country’s GDP. Lending to such debt burdened country is at best irresponsible and at worst wilfully dangerous.

The UK, and other rich industrialised countries in the global north, owe a debt to countries in the global south as compensation for the devastating effects of climate change they have the primary responsibility for creating. A key part of this compensation is providing finance to poorer countries to help reduce the negative impacts of climate change on their lives and livelihoods. 

The report finds: 

• The UK is providing most of its climate finance for adaptation in the form of capital that can only be dispersed as loans through the World Bank’s Pilot Program for Climate Resilience (PPCR). Of the capital that will be given out as loans via the PPCR, 97 per cent comes from the UK. 
• Of the...

Do films motivate people any more than other kinds of campaign communication? Well, here’s one we produced on a very tiny budget aimed at informing an audience of the basic issues of our campaign to clean up the bailed out banks, in this case RBS, but also showing that campaigning on a serious issue can be imaginative, fun (dare I say zany?) and be about more than writing letters to politicians.

Does it do it for you? Have a look (it only lasts four minutes) and let us know what you think.

This Monday WDM campaigners came to the office with big smiles on their faces. Over the weekend, we’d heard that French Oil giant Total, subject to one of our latest online actions, had apparently cancelled its plans to mine tar sands in Madagascar.

High fives all around. Or?

As the story only seemed to have appeared on a mining industry website, we decided we needed to do some proper digging around. The first thing we did was get in touch with one of our allies in Madagascar. It can be just as hard for campaigners in Madagascar to get information as it is for us here, but their understanding is that Total isn’t going to pull out completely, but instead will extend its license to explore rather than moving on to full scale exploitation. 

This was also confirmed by Total’s business partner, ‘Madagascar Oil’ (based in Houston, not Madagascar), which announced last week that the two companies would not start full-scale mining, but will continue to test for the viability of both conventional oil and tar sands extraction.  

Basically, this means mining has been...

Malaika Aleba from Alberta Canada, who spoke in London at International Stop the Tar Sands day.

Last Saturday morning I woke up with an extra spring in my step and hopped (despite the ungodly hour) onto the Oxford tube to London. Why in the world, you may be asking yourself, would a twenty-something-year-old choose to spend a Saturday morning jumping onto a bus, when she could be partaking in a myriad of other activities, such as, you know, sleeping in?

Well, June 18th's International Stop the Tar Sands Day was a great example of the inspiring fact that if the tar sands refuse to sleep in (preferably permanently), so will people across the globe! Need proof? A record number of protests took part in European and North American cities, with people waking up to speak up about what is being called the largest and most destructive industrial project in human history. 

Since I am currently living in Oxford but originally from Alberta, I was more than happy to speak about the horrors happening in my province. I told of how when I visited the infamous sands last fall, I became physically ill from...

Adebisi Alimi has been involved in LGBT advocacy in Nigeria for over a decade and started 'The Independent Project', now the strongest gay group in Nigeria. He had to flee his home in Nigeria after a BBC World Service interview meant his life was threatened and now works with Naz project in London as the African MSM sexual health worker.

Horace G. Campbell is professor of African American Studies and Political Science at Syracuse University where he directs the Africa Initiative. Concerned with issues of conflict resolution, he has been an activist and a scholar for over forty years. His most recent book is Barack Obama and 21st Century Politics: A Revolutionary Moment in the USA.

Jali Fily Cissokho, vocalist and kora player, is regarded as one of the great Senegal griots. His UK appearances have included WOMAD, Glastonbury and Larmer Tree and he has recently worked with A R Rahman, composer of the score for ‘Slumdog Millionaire’.

Deborah Doane is director of the World Development Movement an organisation campaigning UK-wide for global justice. She’s on the board of the Fairtrade Foundation and has a long history of campaigning for corporate accountability.

Dele Fatunla...

Tom Shelton, Handicap International UK

Leading financial institutions, both in the UK and worldwide, are continuing to invest billions of dollars in companies producing cluster munitions, despite these weapons being banned under international law, according to a new report released last week.

The report by Cluster Munition Coalition (CMC) members IKV Pax Christi and Netwerk Vlaanderen1 shows that worldwide, 166 private and public financial institutions from 15 countries continue to invest in companies that produce cluster munitions. Since the Convention on Cluster Munitions was adopted in May 2008, the global amount invested in companies that still produce cluster munitions totals US$39 billion.

The human and economic cost of cluster munitions is well-documented. The weapons cause widespread harm on impact and unexploded submunitions pose a threat to civilians for decades to come. Over the last 40 years, cluster munitions have killed and injured thousands of civilians and continue to do so today. 

...

‘It’s very hard,’ Holly Rakotondralambo told me before the start of last night’s public meeting in London about tar sands mining in Madagascar and Canada. ‘We only have seven people in our organisation. We are like a family.’

Holly and her little ‘family’ have their work cut out. They’re trying to stop French oil company Total destroying the land and stealing the water supplies of hundreds of thousands of people in Melaky, one of the poorest regions of Madagascar.

As she told the audience last night, Total is already test mining in the area. Yet neither Total nor the government of Madagascar have consulted the local people on whose land the company wants to mine.

Total is receiving corporate finance from the Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS).

Holly will carry home to Madagascar the words of Sue Deranger, from the Athabasca Chipewyan First Nation in Canada, who also spoke at last night’s event. Sue’s community is 252 kilometres downstream from the tar sands mine in Alberta – the largest industrial project on earth. Her people have been devastated by pollution from the tar sands far...

Environmental campaigner Holly Rakotondralambo from Madagascar is visiting the UK this week to highlight the threat to her country from proposals to mine tar sands there.  Here she tells WDM about the concerns of the local communities around the mining areas that she has visited and what we can do to help stop the threat of tar sands mining in her country.

Holly Rakotondralambo talks to Liz Murray of WDM in Scotland

After the visit by the Canadian First Nations activists for RBS’s AGM in April, WDM is this week hosting environmental campaigner Holly Rakotondralambo from Madagascar who is here to highlight the threat to her country from proposals to mine tar sands there.  Holly is here on behalf of Alliance Voahary Gasy, a coalition of 28 Malagasy environmental and human rights organisations, all of whom are concerned about the impact that tar sands mining may have on Madagascar if it is allowed to continue.

Holly will be speaking at public meetings in Edinburgh, Glasgow and London and to many journalists...

Jeremy Williams, blogger from MakeWealthHistory.org

As a child growing up in Madagascar, I remember the fleet of distinctive cars driven by the American oil workers. They had their own school for the children of AMOCO families. They even had their own supermarket, which we only found out about when the company pulled out. Like the rest of the expatriate community we descended like hawks on the closing down sale, and came home with armfuls of exotic US goods - bacon bits, tubes of cheese and dried French onions.

AMOCO packed up and left Madagascar in 1987 for the same reason that Chevron and Elf left in the 70s. Madagascar's oil just wasn't profitable enough to extract. It was dirty and far away, in a less than stable country with little infrastructure. Oil was selling for $20 a barrel in 1987, and at that price it was uneconomic.

Fast forward 25 years and it's a very different picture. Soaring global demand has pushed the oil price to new highs, and suddenly those marginal oil fields in difficult places look viable. The deep water drilling in the Gulf of Mexico and the push for Arctic oil are part of the same phenomenon. We've drunk the good stuff, and now we're fumbling around at...

Liz Murray,  head of Scottish campaigns

So we met with RBS yesterday, after having protested outside their AGM and the First Nations activists going in to question the board.  It was a year since we first met the Chairman and his colleagues on this issue, and we do have to ask ourselves if we’ve made progress, and if it was worth it. 

Of course, I’m an optimist, so on balance I’d say yes, it was worth it.  We were able to continue to voice our concerns direct to senior executives and we learnt that RBS has clearly heard our campaign message, realises that things have to change and may be beginning to shift. We heard that a stronger policy is being developed on these issues, which is progress.  Of course only time will tell whether this will be strong enough, but there’s no doubt that if we weren’t putting on the pressure, it wouldn’t even be on the table. 

We’re still very clear that, having been bailed out with such a huge amount of public money, RBS has a responsibility to operate in a way that benefits the public good – and that means switching their investment strategy away from a purely commercially driven one and towards an ethical and environmental one.   We need to see concrete policies on financing...

Press release, 19th April 2011

• Canadian First Nations representatives to voice opposition in person at RBS AGM
• New research shows that, since public bail-out in 2008, RBS has raised more than £5.6 billion for companies involved in controversial Canadian tar sands projects, £2.2 billion of which was in the last twelve months

Representatives from some of Canada’s First Nations are today preparing to demand in person that the Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS) stops financing the controversial tar sands industry in Alberta, Canada, at the bank’s AGM today. [1]

The protest comes as new research, published by a coalition of UK and North American NGOs, shows that since being bailed out with public money in 2008, RBS has raised £5.6 billion in corporate financing to companies involved in Alberta’s tar sands extraction and pipeline development, £2.2 billion of which was in the last twelve months. [2]

The First Nations representatives are expected to arrive at the AGM at RBS’s global head quarters in Gogarburn, Edinburgh, at 1pm. They will take into the AGM a photo petition and motions from UK taxpayers angry that the bank is investing their money in tar sands extraction and use the meeting to call on the board to cease financing tar sands...

WDM’s submission to the International Development Committee’s (IDC) inquiry into sustainable development in a changing climate. WDM focus on the following four points: The proposed Phulbari open-cast coal mine project in Bangladesh; The centrality of creating a low carbon economy in the UK to enable sustainable development in the global south; The unsustainable use of carbon; The need to halt the growth in aviation emissions from the UK, and the impact this would have on sustainable development in the global south.
 

Thousands of lives are under threat from French oil giant Total’s plans to mine tar sands in Melaky, one of the poorest regions in Madagascar. Using taxpayers’ money, the bailed-out Royal Bank of Scotland is helping to finance this heavily polluting industry. With your help, we can push the UK government to stop our money supporting companies that harm the world’s poor.

The Bemolanga oil field is located in one of Madagascar’s poorest regions. In the Melaky region 70% of the population live below the poverty line and 50% of children under the age of three have stunted growth due to malnutrition. The tar sands will threaten the survival of villagers throughout the region and could pave the way for further exploitation of tar sands the world over. We must not allow this to happen.

Iain Thom, Scottish campaigns assistant

Would you let an arms company sponsor National Peace Week? How about the BNP sponsoring International Refugee Day, or Lambert & Butler logos all over a cancer charity fundraising event? These (imaginary) examples seem far-fetched, but they’re no less strange than a climate action week sponsored by a coal-burning energy corporation, an oil-hungry supermarket giant and the UK’s biggest financier of fossil fuel projects. Welcome to the strange, topsy-turvy world of Climate Week."

 - Danny Chivers author of the 'No-Nonsense Guide to Climate Change' writing for The Ecologist.

You might have noticed this week is Climate Week, a showcase of Britain’s ambition and confidence to...

All over the world, diverse groups from community activists to schoolchildren, small businesses to faith-based networks, are starting to take action on climate change. Big business is following suit, but often with tactics that bring their integrity into question. Climate change is being used to create a new kind of brand identity, without any of the fundamental changes needed to tackle the root causes of the problem itself – the use of fossil fuels.

This report, written by environmental campaigners Platform with the help of WDM, takes the case of the Royal Bank of Scotland, an international bank with interests across the fossil fuel sector that is promoting itself as a genuine actor in climate change efforts. Using Bloomberg data this report compares RBS’ environmental rhetoric with the bank’s financing of coal companies around the world in the last three years, and examines the efforts of civil society to date to pressure the bank to adopt more climate-friendly policies.

RBS was recapitalised by the UK taxpayer from 2008 onwards, following major losses due to their reckless financial practices. Now, in 2011, the British public faces massive spending cuts. The taxpayers’ money used to bail out the banks could have...

Decades of increasing emissions have meant the UK owes a massive climate debt to the world’s poorest people to compensate for climate devastation already caused. With every ton of carbon dioxide released, crops continue to be destroyed, water becomes scarcer, disease continues to spread at an unprecedented level, and weather related disasters become more common. Ultimately, more and more lives are wrecked, and the climate debt continues to increase. 

When I speak with campaigners from the global south about climate debt, it quickly becomes apparent that whist they believe paying the debt is critical, it is also essential that the debt does not continue to grow. This is why WDM played a critical role in campaigning for the Climate Change Bill, which became an Act in 2008. Together with our allies around the UK, we pushed for, and won, the strongest climate change legislation in the world. What made this such a powerful piece of legislation was that it was supported by all political parties, not only the ruling Labour party. 

During his time in opposition, David Cameron spearheaded the Tories in speaking out on climate change. He revamped his party’s image and boosted his green credentials by campaigning...

Kirsty Wright, climate campaigner

Today, WDM campaigners joined other organisations from the UK and around the world for a day of action targeting the World Bank. Actions were done outside World Bank offices from Washington and Paris to South Africa and India. The day was called because of concerns about the Bank’s lending for fossil fuels, which has been increasing even at a time of climate crisis, and in spite of the Bank’s lobbying to become the institution responsible for climate finance.

Despite the increasingly devastating impacts of climate change for the world’s poorest people, over the last five years World Bank funding for coal-fired power stations has soared 40-fold to hit a record high of £2.8 billion in 2010.

About a quarter of the world’s population, over 1.5 billion people across the global south, have no access to electricity. They have no light in the evening, limited access to radio and communications, no modern power for their work and no way to store medicines safely. This lack of energy is keeping people trapped in poverty. However, despite the World Bank’s pro-...

Iain Thom, Scottish campaigns assistant

Timed for release just as this year’s round of bonuses and bank profits are announced, documentary film ‘Inside Job’ does just what it says on the reel tin:  Director Charles Ferguson argues that both investment bankers and financial regulators knew that the way banks and hedge funds turned a profit was rotten to the core, but that they carried on regardless. 

In short, that the 2008 financial crisis was avoidable.

Authoritative US professors and industry figures are interviewed, including the ubiquitous George Soros, but there is also a long list of names that refused to appear, the food commodity traders Goldman Sachs high up on that list.  The interviews are widely interspersed with narrative shots but sometimes I felt the chopping and changing did not allow the personalities to come through.

The film is almost exclusively US-based.  We learn of bankers who earned massive bonuses on short-term profits in a mortgage market with incentives so perverse it was set up to fail, and of regulators staffed by people who made millions from the rotten system and who simply did not do their job.

Foreclosures and job losses across the US as a result of the credit crunch cardiac arrest and...

As bailed-out bank RBS publishes details of its 2010 financial results, campaigners call on the government to cure RBS of its high-risk oil addition. RBS’s results show that it is still not making a profit and today’s photo call highlights the unhealthy investments of an unhealthy bank.

Campaigners from the World Development Movement and Friends of the Earth Scotland are urging the government, as majority shareholder in the bank, to use its power to switch the investments of the Royal Bank of Scotland away from climate-damaging fossil fuels and instead to finance much-needed low carbon industries.

At the Treasury, campaigners delivered over a thousand postcards signed by taxpayers angry at the Government for letting RBS use their money to finance projects and companies that are worsening climate change and threatening human rights.

A campaigner dressed as an RBS banker, addicted to fossil fuels, lay 'unconscious' on the pavement outside the Treasury this morning, having overdosed on oil while another dressed as a doctor tried to cure the banker of his oil addiction.

RBS is the UK bank that has been most heavily involved in financing the global coal industry and companies mining tar sands in Canada. Since being bailed out in October 2008, RBS has...

Liz Murray, WDM campaigner and UK taxpayer

Stephen Hester, boss of bailed-out bank RBS, is set to get just over £2million worth of shares as a bonus for his last year’s work.  Well, as one RBS shareholder (mine are part of the Government’s 83% stake, since they bailed you out and I’m a UK taxpayer) to another, Mr Hester, I think we’d better watch out because who knows what might happen to our shares if you don’t have a long, hard look at your bank’s future investment strategy.   I’m talking about coal, oil, gas and now high-carbon, super-polluting tar sands that RBS continues to finance.

 
With RBS having such a fossil-fuel rich portfolio of loans and investments, we shareholders are pretty exposed.  Because as climate change policies tighten, and the fiscal and regulatory measures needed to meet those policies are brought into play, then your bank’s fossil fuel investments could well go bad – and that would be bad news for your £2 million of shares, Mr Hester (not to mention mine).   So, let’s protect our investment. 

I think the answer is for me to ask the Chancellor to meet with you to see whether, between you, you can’t come up with a solution that reduces your investments in fossil fuels,...

Environment Minister, Chris Huhne, was here in Scotland yesterday, speaking to MSPs about the UK Government’s plans for the Green Investment Bank.  Talk, perhaps inevitably, turned to whether the bank might be based in Edinburgh, given the renewable energy investment expertise that exists here.

Here at WDM we’re right behind the idea of the Green Investment Bank (wherever it ends up being), although there is a big question mark about the rather puny £1billion of initial capital that the Government is suggesting that it starts off with.  But it shouldn’t be overlooked that there is already a bank based in Edinburgh that, like the proposed Green Investment Bank, is almost entirely owned by the Government and that, with the right investment criteria, could make an even bigger contribution to moving the UK swiftly to a low carbon economy than the GIB’s £1billion initial capital. 

That bank, the Royal Bank of Scotland, is more than 80% owned by the Government (and the UK taxpayer) after being bailed out with a whopping £45.5billion by the last Government, but it finances more fossil fuel exploitation than any other bank in the UK.  This is in direct conflict with Government targets to tackle climate change and the proposed low carbon...

Kate Blagogevic, WDM media officer writng from Oaxaca, Mexico. 

Earlier this week, we met Oliver in the Universidad de la Tierra. It’s a small organisation of 7 academics who are working to provide alternative analysis, education and solutions to those being pushed by governments and the powers that lie behind the dominant system of corporate globalisation.

It was founded a decade ago in Oaxaca, a city with has a history imbued with a fight for autonomy from state and corporate power. The university offers exchanges for foreign students to open their eyes to the political and economic struggles at play in Mexico; and apprenticeships to people from surrounding communities; including midwifery, environmental management and computer science. The ethos behind this is to teach practical skills that can be put to use in communities to avoid the ‘brain drain’ from rural to urban areas and provide an alternative to the dominant education system where learning is so often directed purely towards functioning within the capitalist system that so often fails the people who try to be a part of it.

Unitierra are involved in a huge range of practical community projects helping to create a pathway towards a more...