Clean the banks

Download 'Cashing in on Tar Sands' (PDF format)

As the oil sources available to Western oil majors became scarcer, the relative commercial attractiveness of the Alberta tar sands have improved.

Global capitalism has entered a fundamental crisis of legitimacy, triggered by a ‘perfect storm’ of the banking meltdown, rising energy costs and a spike in world food prices. Governments in the world’s richest countries are looking on in horror as the debt and fossil-fuelled fantasies on which they have built their political mythologies crumble around them.

Global capitalism has entered a fundamental crisis of legitimacy, triggered by a ‘perfect storm’ of the banking meltdown, rising energy costs and a spike in world food prices. Governments in the world’s richest countries are looking on in horror as the debt and fossil-fuelled fantasies on which they have built their political mythologies crumble around them.

The World Development Movement are today announcing a week of protests to be held simultaneously with the RBS AGM on Wednesday 28 April. This will involve protests outside the AGM centre in Edinburgh and RBS branches across the UK. We and oher organisations will be calling for a moratorium on RBS investments in tar sands because of their devastating impact on human rights and the climate.

WDM are not happy about  today's Royal Bank of Scotland's annual results and bonuses announcements.

As you may know, we are campaigning for RBS to phase out its investments in mining companies like Vedanta and projects, like oil extraction from tar sands that are linked with controversial human rights violations. We are arguing that the bonuses awarded for investments that hurt the lives of ordinary people and the publically owned bank should be benefitting society in the UK and around the world.

The World Development Movement reacted angrily to today's Royal Bank of Scotland's annual results and bonuses announcements.

WDM is campaigning for RBS to phase out its investments in mining companies like Vedanta and projects, like oil extraction from tar sands that are linked with controversial human rights violations. They are arguing that the bonuses awarded for investments that hurt the lives of ordinary people and the publically owned bank should be benefitting society in the UK and around the world.

Following the government bail-out of the banks, taxpayers now own 84 per cent of RBS yet the Treasury has failed to stop RBS’ investments in projects linked to human rights abuses and climate change.

So far the US and Europe has managed to find $3 trillion to bail out the banks, more than $1 trillion of which has gone to the UK banking sector. The financial crisis, caused by the banks themselves, has cased significant increases in poverty and inequality in both the developed and developing world.

Here’s a puzzler: what is the UK’s biggest contributor to climate change? Did you answer coal? Good guess, but no. Transport? It’s a biggy for sure, but not the largest. Farming? A distant fourth.

Give up? OK, Britain’s number one contributor is… the banking industry! And top of the list within the sector is the taxpayers’ very own, and much unloved, Royal Bank of Scotland.