Banks need to do more

CHRISTIAN Aid Supporter in Viewpoints (Saturday, May 12) drew attention to the charity’s Big Shift campaign to get the big High Street banks to get out of financing climate change and to get into renewables.

They didn’t mention the recent news of HSBC, one of their targeted banks, announcing that they will stop funding most new coal-fired power plants, investment in oil rigs and Arctic drilling.

This is great and shows they are aware of hard-headed economic arguments as well as the reputational damage being linked with dirty energy is bringing them.

Decisions to divest from these un-redeemable “stranded assets” is mounting - on Monday, May 14 the Church in Ireland was reported as pulling out of all fossil fuels; other church bodies have already pulled out of coal and tar sands.

HSBC’s action is welcome turnaround from increasing coal by $450m in 2016-17, but as reported doesn’t say anything about fracking and still has them prepared to support coal in Bangladesh, Indonesia and Vietnam - poor countries which are desperate for electricity and which suffer disproportionately from climate change. HSBC’s action is not good enough. If they want to help them get electricity they could have positively shifted to supporting renewables and energy efficiency.

Barclays had their AGM disrupted a fortnight ago by students from People & Planet protesting at their continuing finance of polluting and climate-changing oil internationally and refusal to reject fracking.

Lloyds’ AGM on 24th faces shareholders challenging unacceptable financing, as does RBS’s a week later. Perhaps the rush to sell off RBS is in part because the government realises it not only has too many unprofitable branches, it is tied to dinosaur industries and still needs a ‘Big Shift’ to financing sustainable generation.

And BP’s AGM in Manchester faces a vigil in solidarity with people suffering from abusive fracking in Argentina and Greater Manchester Pension Fund beneficiaries continue to have their financial futures threatened. So, one cheer for HSBC’s move, but ‘the struggle continues’! W. Black, M16