(Not very) funny money – by Bill McKibben

Source: (Not very) funny money – by Bill McKibben

Our chances of getting out of the climate crisis are only so-so—and they get materially lower every time some important institution decides not to face facts. In this case, the effort was almost comical—one of the world’s largest banks tried to gaslight a small group of nuns. Clearly these bankers did not go to parochial school, or they would have known this was unlikely to end well.

Here’s the story. The Sisters of St. Joseph of Peace own some shares of Citibank. They filed a resolution for April 25th’s annual general meeting, asking that Citibank report what it was doing to protect indigenous rights. It said, specifically, that Citi had “provided over $5bn to [pipeline company] Enbridge, enabling the widely opposed Enbridge Line 3 and Line 5 pipeline reroutes.”

The two pipelines in question stretch from the tarsands, carrying some of the world’s dirtiest oil under some of the world’s most important waters (the Mississippi River and the Great Lakes to be exact). They were opposed by all kinds of people, including tremendous resistance from Indigenous groups whose traditional lands they cross.

But rather than confess, or even repent, Citibank decided to spin—indeed, it engaged in the kind of rhetorical hijinks I fear we once called Jesuitical. In a message to shareholders, Citibank said, specifically, “the proponent asserts that Citi is providing $5 billion in financing to the Enbridge line 3 pipeline expansion, which is untrue.” You see, it’s untrue because they didn’t provide money directly for the project—they just provided a loan for the general support of the pipeline company.

The amount of logic it takes to pull apart this claim is…minimal.

Let’s say I go into a Citibank office and meet with a loan officer and tell him I need a loan.

He’s curious: what for?

Oh, I tell him, there’s a large shipment of illegal drugs arriving soon that I want to buy a share of.

I’m sorry, he says, but we don’t lend money for illegal drugs.

Oh, I counter brightly, what if you give me a loan for…’general home improvements.’

That we can do! he says happily (and of course with the confidence that I’ll soon have plenty of drug money to pay him back).

Look—Enbridge went all out to build that pipeline across the upper Mississippi; among other things, they laid out huge sums to local law enforcement, essentially turning them into corporate cops, who then proceeded to beat up and intimidate protesters.