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Let's be friendsPeople & Planet students call on RBS to end toxic loans: those that damage the climate
This morning People & Planet students, dressed as 'financial advisers', turned up outside the RBS-NatWest office on Bishopsgate to give RBS-NatWest some sound advice for investing in a more sustainable future.
RBS-NatWest could choose to reduce their footprint
RBS-NatWest’s investments add up to climate chaos
Displaying RBS-NatWest’s true colours
Displaying a giant graph showing RBS-NatWest’s increasing climate impact, the protesters carried a giant calculator showing that RBS-NatWest’s current investments add up to climate chaos. Hundreds of action cards collected by People & Planet groups across the country were handed in to RBS-NatWest to demand an end to loans to fossil fuels and a massive increase in investments in renewables.
Today RBS-NatWest announced record corporate losses, and a strategic review of its operations. RBS-NatWest’s ‘toxic assets’ will now be insured by the UK government, and yet in this review, no mention is made of the climate impacts of RBS-NatWest’s loans.
Hannah Schling, Ditch Dirty Development campaigner at People & Planet, said:
What is being announced today makes no reference to the most toxic of RBS investments, those which risk our climate. As representatives of the generation that will live with the climate crisis, we are calling for a redefinition of these terms. RBS are a ‘bad bank’ because they invest in toxic fuels such as tar sands. Tar sands extraction threatens permanent destruction for an area in Canada larger than the whole of Florida, and any further extraction threatens runaway climate change.
RBS-NatWest, sometimes known as the ‘Oil and Gas Bank’ is the UK high street bank with the biggest investments in fossil fuel projects. People & Planet argues that now is the time for RBS to cut its investments in climate-damaging projects, and to secure its future, and the creation of tens of thousands of new green jobs by focussing instead on investments in renewable energy and energy efficiency.
Nick Chan, from Oxford University People & Planet said:
With the public owning 70% of RBS, we demand that our share is used to create sustainable, clean renewable energy to power our way out of the climate mess RBS has financed. We own RBS, they already owe the taxpayer billions of pounds. We need to ensure they don’t also owe the UK citizen a stable climate.
This action is part of People & Planet’s Ditch Dirty Development campaign, which targets RBS-NatWest, highlighting the bank’s lending to coal, oil and gas projects around the world. The emissions resulting from RBS-NatWest’s lending to oil and gas projects in 2006 reached 36.9 million tonnes of carbon - as much as the entire emissions output of Scotland itself. In 2007 and 2008, RBS-NatWest loaned an estimated $16 billion in 27 different loans to coal-related companies around the world. These included RBS taking part in massive loans worth $70 billion to E.ON, the controversial energy giant attempting to build the first coal-fired power station in this country in 34 years.
Find out more
For more information about tar sands see the tar sands case study page, and check out the new WWF and Co-op Bank ‘Toxic Fuels’ campaign.
RBS-NatWest’s involvement in the fossil fuel industry is documented in two reports: ‘The Oil and Gas Bank: RBS and the financing of climate change.’ and ‘Cashing in on Coal: RBS, UK Banks and the Global Coal Industry.’
Take action
Email RBS-NatWest CEO Stephen Hester and Government Ministers Ed Miliband and Alistair Darling to call for a transition to sustainable energy investments. And send it on to all your friends!
Take part in Fossil and Financial Fools Day on 1 April 2009, to call on RBS-NatWest to end fossil fuel investments.
Check out the Ditch Dirty Development action guide for loads more action ideas.
