Category: Businesses_MORE_TA ECONOMICS_CN Greenwashing_CN

HSBC has suspended a senior banker after he referred to climate crisis warnings as “unsubstantiated” and “shrill” during a conference speech that has since been denounced by the lender’s chief executive.
Stuart Kirk, who has been HSBC’s head of responsible investing since last July, will remain suspended until the bank completes an internal investigation into the matter.

A new report suggests the money that Big Tech companies keep in the banking system can do more climate damage than the products they sell.

How bad is the climate stalemate? In the United States, we have gotten used to legislative inaction, on climate as with much else. But even by those debased standards a failure to pass a major emissions-cutting bill this Congress would be, potentially, a generational setback — pushing hopes for paradigm-shifting legislation so far over the time horizon they effectively disappear.

Eliminating air pollution caused by burning fossil fuels would prevent more than 50,000 premature deaths and provide more than $600 billion in health benefits in the United States every year, according to a new study by University of Wisconsin-Madison researchers.

Investors in three of the world’s largest oil and gas companies this week rejected proposals for the firms to set stronger climate targets, as fossil fuel firms reap record profits following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

The world’s leading energy economist has warned against investing in large new oil and gas developments, which would have little impact on the current energy crisis and soaring fuel prices but spell devastation to the planet.

The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) extended how long the public will have to weigh in on a proposal that would require companies to reveal their vulnerabilities and contributions to climate change.

John Morton was tapped last year to lead Treasury's first-ever “Climate Hub” as part of the administration's whole-of-government approach to climate change. A year later, the former Obama official and sustainable investing veteran says his team is playing a “coordinating and agitating” role within the agency to accelerate the clean energy transition — while also safeguarding the U.S. financial system against climate-fueled threats.

Citi’s proposal, which would have limited the bank from lending and underwriting new oil and gas projects, garnered 12.8% of the vote. Similar proposals at Wells Fargo and Bank of America each received 11% of shareholder support.

Republican state and federal lawmakers, their campaign coffers filled with fossil fuel donations, are quietly building a nationwide effort to pass anti-divestment bills that would punish financial institutions that consider the climate crisis in their business deals or try to do something about it by not working with fossil fuel companies.