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Let's be friendsStudents vote for a clean, green RBS
Today, as the Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS) held its Annual General Meeting (AGM), People & Planet students in London and Edinburgh protested to expose the bank's investments in climate changing fossil fuels.
“Roll up to vote for climate chaos!”
Image © Philip Kirk
‘Banker’ votes to keep investing in climate chaos
Image © Philip Kirk
Votes for RBS to invest in renewable energy
Image © Philip Kirk
Passers by stop to watch the protest
Image © Philip Kirk
Sweeping coal investments under the carpet
Demonstrating outside the RBS AGM
“RBS: clean up your investments”
Outside RBS HQ in London
Image © Philip Kirk
In Edinburgh, outside the AGM itself, protesters dressed as cleaners and armed with feather dusters, voted for the bank to clean up its dirty fossil fuel investments. The protesters swept lumps of coal under the carpet to symbolise the lack of transparency in RBS’s coal investments. Research shows that the bank in 2007 and 2008 loaned an estimated $16 billion in 27 different loans to coal-related companies around the world.
Ben Miller, an Edinburgh University student participating in the protest said:
We’re here today because RBS is the most damaging bank for the environment in the UK and Europe, and the double whammy is that they are now using taxpayers’ money to invest in coal and other climate damaging industries. Now that the public owns over 70% of RBS, we want the government to make the bank invest in low carbon energy, essential to stopping climate chaos.
In London, at the main RBS office on Bishopsgate, members of the public were invited to vote either for a sustainable future or for climate chaos. The vote was overwhelmingly for RBS-NatWest to use their investments to build a sustainable future, with only two votes for climate chaos, purportedly from a ‘S. Hester’ and a ‘T.McKillop (Sir)’!
Jason Davies, student from Keele University People & Planet, said:
This public vote shows that UK taxpayers want RBS to become a model bank for the 21st century, investing in a low carbon economy rather than the dirty fossil fuels which are causing climate chaos. I hope that the RBS shareholders at the AGM today take this message on board and act to stop catastrophic climate change.
People & Planet is part of a coalition of environmental and development groups which has today publicly called on RBS to stop pouring public money into climate damaging fossil fuel projects around the world. The letter was published in the Guardian this morning. The groups have also instructed their lawyers to write to the Treasury to reveal what environmental impact assessment was made at the time of the recapitalisation, and to call for proper assessment and evaluation of the climate risks associated with the RBS loan portfolio.
The government, with majority ownership of RBS, has today demonstrated its ability to influence the bank, and yet has not applied this influence to the climate impacts of the bank’s investments. People & Planet are urging the government to apply environmental and climate change regulation to the bank’s lending decisions, and are supporting an Early Day Motion put down by Martin Horwood, Liberal Democrat MP for Cheltenham, calling for such regulation.
The Government is also under pressure from the Parliamentary Environmental Audit Committee (EAC). Following evidence submitted by People & Planet, Platform and BankTrack, the EAC issued a report in March 2009 that made the recommendation:
The Government now has a controlling interest in a number of banks. We recommend that the Treasury examine and report on how some form of environmental criteria for the investment strategies pursued by these banks might be imposed, and what impacts this might have on UK sustainable development objectives.
Get involved in the campaign to get RBS-NatWest to Ditch Dirty Development
Pledge to Boycott RBS-NatWest if they fail to clean up their dirty, climate changing investments.
Lobby your MP to sign EDM 880: RBS and Climate Change, calling for environmental regulation on the banks lending decisions.
