Submitted by Climate Action Muskoka
Climate Action Muskoka (CAM) activists are joining forces with groups all across Canada on Friday, January 29 to say Fossil Banks? No Thanks! to the Big 5 Canadian banks. CAM is inviting everyone to call, fax, and email their local bank branches to protest the Big 5 banks’ ongoing destructive fossil fuel investments and loans.
“This is our opportunity to act locally by adding our voices to amplify the national Fossil Banks, No Thanks campaign,” says Sue McKenzie, CAM co-founder.
Canadian banks are among the biggest investors in fossil fuels worldwide and have poured $481 billion into fossil fuels since the Paris Agreement, according to the 2020 Banking on Climate Change Fossil Fuel Finance Report. The breakdown of fossil investments for each bank are as follows: TD $43.7 billion, RBC $40.1 billion, SCOTIA $39.1 billion, BMO $36.7 billion, and CIBC $32.4 billion. Three Canadian banks have even made the “Dirty Dozen” Worst Banks Since the Paris Agreement (2015-2019) list. The tar sands are completely reliant on Canadian banks.
While recent stay-at-home orders keep climate protesters out of the streets, the banks keep pumping money into fossil fuels. While the rest of us are sacrificing to keep our communities safe, the Big 5 are making new loans and investments that are putting the well-being of future generations at risk.
“Slowing climate change is one of the most important things I can do to ensure a bright future for my daughter,” says Matt Lie-Paehlke of Climate Pledge Collective, explaining why he has stepped away from his Ph.D. work to do climate work. “I’ve put aside other goals to help people lower their carbon footprint and get involved in politics—but the flood of money coming out of RBC and other big banks outweighs any small gains I might achieve.”
CAM is also asking Muskokans to join the ongoing BankSwitch campaign: actionnetwork.org/forms/bankswitch.
“The main goal of this campaign is to challenge banks to compete for our custom by cleaning up their own investment policies, not just through greenwashing projects, but by moving investments away from fossil fuels,” states McKenzie.
The concept is simple. You tell your branch manager you’re moving your money to a more responsible financial institution on Earth Day, April 2021. Hopefully, you won’t have to make this move if your bank steps up and makes substantial changes to its investment policies. You will find specific information, letter templates for each bank, and talking points for speaking with bank managers here: climatepledgecollective.org.
CAM is an inclusive, non-partisan group of citizens concerned about climate change in Muskoka. climateactionmuskoka.org
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There’s a curious fact about investment in oil & gas or for that matter any resource industry, it’s not the amount of money that goes in which creates the problem it’s the amount of money that doesn’t go in that creates environmental stress.
To put it another way, if you open up a mine and you are underfunded, or an oil recovery system and you have a funding problem you are going to have to cut back on something. You are not going to cut back on the production or drilling or recovery platforms, no you are going to cut back on safety and cleanup.
Now you might think since Canadians have been drilling for oil etc for a century and a half or more we would have government regs in place to prevent safety and cleanup cutbacks. Yeah, you might think that. But it wouldn’t be true.
So what do have scattered up and down the length and breadth of this country? Mineral recovery systems that have been operated and as soon as they stopped becoming profitable abandoned.
Simple, you say, make the companies bond for cleanup. Yep, you would think that, but there is nothing simple about it. I once lived on an abandoned mine site in an abandoned mining town on the west coast.
Wonderful place with the bluest water you could possibly want. You might think you were in the Caribbean to look at it.
Or it might have been the metals leaching into the sea.
This particular site was taken over by the NDP government and then abandoned by the government.
Same thing with oil and gas wells. Just cap them off and hope for the best.
I am not sure if I am allowed to create links to other papers here but this story writte by a friend in the Narwal sets it out for those seeking details:
https://thenarwhal.ca/the-story-of-albertas-100-billion-well-liability-problem-how-did-we-get-here/
Now I am not saying all of these $100 of billions of problems are created by underfunded — actually yes I am. I spend a decade in that game and I can give you chapter and verse what the funders, whether it’s by loan or royalty stream, usually the latter, demand.
Look, Canada isn’t going to stop producing oil and gas any time soon. Frankly, we are ramping up exponentially every year and our balance of payments depends on it.
It’s sort of like cutting funding to needle sites. We know heroin is a bad idea, but the solution isn’t going to be to encourage the death of all the heroin users, it’s going to be much closer to the Portuguese model of recovery. If you tell banks to slash funding, the industry will go to private lenders, who incidentally will get their cash from banks and their terms will be harsher and cleanup will suffer.
These days I work in the South, not North America. Why? well, it’s not because they have more resources it’s because it is cheaper to recover material. And so long as we exist in a capital-driven society this is the inevitable consequence. Your investor, bank or private, will tell you to maximize profit by cutting back on everything that is non-essential. Cleanup is non-essential. And governments, all governments which depend on tax revenue and job creation, which is all governments, are complicit.
Take Joe, sorry President Biden. Shuts down Keystone, strangling the less hazardous western oil delivery system to Cushing. Why? Ostensibly to fulfill a promise to environmentalists. Sure that is possible but in the very same speech, he supports the most destructive, most damaging most heinous oil recovery system ever invented; pumping toxic fluids into the ground to extrude oil, ruining farmland, and water supply. Fracking. Joe likes fracking. Just like Obama did.
Some environmentalists, those guys.
So the lesson I draw is a simple fund not more or less funding but better. Fund everything including cleanup.
And all you folks in Kenora and elsewhere with you trucks parked in the shopping mall lots and your HVAC-ed homes kept at the comfortable 68-celsius year, round tell your supplier you need to see source data and cleanup for every liter that goes into your tanks.
Thank you for reading this.
A little education is in order here. Currently, oil is 31% of the world’s primary (natural) energy supply. Half of that or 15.5% of global energy goes to power cars and light trucks. All global car manufacturers will have an all-electric lineup by 2025. There are 74 models of electric cars and light trucks on the market in 2021. But replacing the global fleet of vehicles with Internal Combustion Engines (ICEs) will take until 2050. The other half of global oil consumption goes to power all other forms of transportation and heavy equipment for farming and construction. Some of those applications are being converted to battery-electric and some to hydrogen fuel cells. The most demanding applications will remain on diesel fuel.
The world’s energy experts expect demand for oil will peak around 2030 then decline to level at about 15% of the global primary energy supply by 2050. That, along with a long list of other changes will enable net-zero emissions by 2050. Shutting down the global oil supply before it can be replaced by other forms of energy would cause an energy shortage that would devastate production and transport of the global food supply, and a long list of other things. As usual, the poorest countries would bear the brunt of an energy shortage.
Canada is fortunate to have the world’s 3rd largest “proven” reserves of oil that amounts to 10% of global reserves. As our own consumption declines, the world is going to need more oil from Canada because smaller reserves (especially those owned by the biggest consumers; the USA, China and the EU) are being rapidly depleted. By 2050, Canada will be one of only 6 countries (and the only stable democracy) with oil left to produce.
The completion of the Trans-Mountain and Enbridge line 3 expansions will enable Canada to produce and ship 5 million barrels per day for the balance of this century. Our oil will be worth more in the future than it is now. So, it can act as a sort of retirement plan for Canada. Better to take the long-term view and not cash all our chips in the short term.
Unfortunately, Canada’s oil industry has been subject to a campaign of misinformation by business competitors and other uninformed opponents. 80% of Alberta’s oil sands are too deep for pit mining and must be extracted in place and pumped to the surface. Emissions from Oil Sands production comes from burning natural gas to make steam to melt the bitumen so it can be pumped. Significant progress has been made in reducing those emissions and they can be eliminated by 2030. That, along with electric vehicle sales driven by the rising carbon tax will enable Canada to meet 2030 emissions targets. But elimination of emissions will require investment. And it is mutually beneficial for the Canadian Banks to supply those funds. So, efforts to have Canadian banks withhold such investments is a classic example of shooting oneself in the foot.
Those that would have us stop using fossil fuels right away need to provide an alternative.
Sadly, although the long term goal has to be an alternative, we don’t have it yet and most of us, particularly in Canada when that thermometer says -23C like this morning, don’t really want to hide in the dark under a polar bear rug.
What we can do is pressure (in a reasonable manner) our leaders and industry to speed up the process.
We can stop wasting fossil fuels on discretionary and often in efficient or unnecessary uses. Do you really need a 500 HP SUV or a 30 foot wake board boat?
We will have to be prepared to pay more to travel and move things about in our society. We are ultimately going to be paying for a change with our hard earned cash so we should start by looking carefully at what we buy, how it is made, shipped and used and buy the most ecological but affordable option.
This will all take time. Those who advocate marching about and demanding instant change are just not in the real world.
Our leaders need to make things like conservation and alternative energy installations more easy to accomplish. Currently, a solar electric installation is a big, complex and very expensive option. It need not be if a few changes were made in the technical side and regulatory system. This could be a good forward step.
Many bureaucratic bodies have as a main function, the preservation of their bureaucracy. This is not necessarily a good thing.
I hope this virus is over soon, I thought it affected Lungs, but it seems to affect Minds also.
And say no to 10% of the Canadian economy and 160,000 well paying jobs? Get a grip.
One of the dumbest ideas I’ve heard of yet.
I would like to take this opportunity to invite all the people that are against anything to do with fossil fuel to just shut off there gas meter and stop driving there cars as of right now.