Launched at Jane Fonda’s final #FireDrillFriday event in Washington D.C. on January 10, the Stop the Money Pipeline , according to a Sierra Club press release , will consolidate a number of existing divestment campaigns and target the worst climate offenders in each part of the financial sector. The first campaign round consists of three major targets: amongst banks: JP Morgan Chase; amongst insurance companies: Liberty Mutual; and amongst asset managers, BlackRock. Groups involved in Stop the Money Pipeline are: 350.org, Rainforest Action Network (RAN), Sierra Club, Greenpeace USA, Sunrise Project, Future Coalition, Divest Ed, Divest-Invest, Native Movement, Giniw Collective, Transition U.S., Oil Change International, 350 Seattle, EarthRights International, Union of Concerned Scientists, Majority Action, The YEARS Project, and Amazon Watch.

The Stop the Money Pipeline website has archived some of the arguments for their campaign – including Bill McKibben’s September Commentary in the New Yorker “Money Is the Oxygen on Which the Fire of Global Warming Burns”, and “Why Big Banks Are Accused Of Funding The Climate Crisis” in HuffPost in October 2019. The campaign launch has been described in “Climate Movement Takes Aim at Wall Street, Because ‘Money Is Only Language Fossil Fuel Industry Speaks‘” in Common Dreams (Jan. 9); , and in “Want to do something about climate change? Follow the money” in the New York Times on Jan. 11. In that Opinion piece, Bill McKibben and Lennox Yearwood Jr. describe their arrest at a sit- in at the Chase Bank which was part of the campaign launch. Democracy Now also covered the events in “Stop the Money Pipeline”: 150 Arrested at Protests Exposing Wall Street’s Link to Climate Crisis“ on January 13 .

Are campaigns having any effect?

Perhaps it is just coincidence, but on January 9, BlackRock announced it is signing on to Climate Action 100+, a global investor network formed in 2015 and which includes California Public Employees’ Retirement System (CalPERS), HSBC Global Asset Management, and Manulife Asset Management. BlackRock also announced a new investment strategy, summarized in “BlackRock Will Put Climate Change at Center of Investment Strategy” in the New York Times (Jan. 14) . The NYT article emphasizes the company’s influence as the world’s largest investment fund with over $7 trillion under management, and states that “this move … could reshape how corporate America does business and put pressure on other large money managers to follow suit.” The new strategy is outlined in two Annual Letters from BlackRock’s CEO Larry Fink: Sustainability as BlackRock’s New Standard for Investing , the letter to corporate clients states, “Our investment conviction is that sustainability-integrated portfolios can provide better risk-adjusted returns to investors”. The second letter, titled A Fundamental Reshaping of Finance, acknowledges that protests have had an impact on their position: ” Climate change has become a defining factor in companies’ long-term prospects. Last September, when millions of people took to the streets to demand action on climate change, many of them emphasized the significant and lasting impact that it will have on economic growth and prosperity – a risk that markets to date have been slower to reflect.” He continues: “…. awareness is rapidly changing, and I believe we are on the edge of a fundamental reshaping of finance.… climate change is almost invariably the top issue that clients around the world raise with BlackRock. …. In the near future – and sooner than most anticipate – there will be a significant reallocation of capital.” However, this urgency seems somewhat at odds with another statement in the Letter to CEO’s: “…. While the low-carbon transition is well underway, the technological and economic realities mean that the transition will take decades. Global economic development, particularly in emerging markets, will continue to rely on hydrocarbons for a number of years. As a result, the portfolios we manage will continue to hold exposures to the hydrocarbon economy as the transition advances.”

Other divestment developments:

Urgency is a key theme in a new public call by Greta Thunberg and other youth leaders. “At Davos we will tell world leaders to abandon the fossil fuel economy” – an Opinion piece carried by The Guardian on January 10, directed to the world’s economic elite scheduled to gather at the World Economic Forum in Davos at the end of January. The core message is urgent: “We call upon the world’s leaders to stop investing in the fossil fuel economy that is at the very heart of this planetary crisis. Instead, they should invest their money in existing sustainable technologies, research and in restoring nature.. …Anything less than immediately ceasing these investments in the fossil fuel industry would be a betrayal of life itself. Today’s business as usual is turning into a crime against humanity. We demand that leaders play their part in putting an end to this madness. Our future is at stake, let that be their investment. An article in Common Dreams on January 10 highlights the youth campaign and notes that it aligns with Stop the Money Pipeline .

C40 Cities released a new toolkit on January 7: Divesting from Fossil Fuels, Investing in Our Future: A Toolkit for Cities. The toolkit is directed at city officials, outlining steps required to divest their pension funds from fossil fuels. It includes eight successful case studies – from Auckland, Berlin, Copenhagen, London, Melbourne, New York City, Oslo, and Stockholm – all of whom have divestment experience and none of whose city pension funds were negatively impacted by divestment. C40 Cities is a network of 94 municipalities with a population of over 700 million people, active in promoting climate change action at the municipal level.