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The UK government keep saying they want to lead the way on climate change. And yet here they are, handing over £14bn in tax-payer’s money in tax -breaks to massive oil and gas companies.

President Biden has announced Jerome Powell for a second term as Chair of the Federal Reserve. And that’s bad news for the climate. The Federal Reserve is the US’s central bank.

Coming out of COP26, several banks announced commitment to net-zero by 2050. They sound good, but unfortunately the announcements left enough wiggle room for many banks to continue “business as usual.” Years of people power leading to COP resulted in some of the world’s largest financial institutions finally acknowledging their outsize role in fueling climate change.

HSBC are part of the net zero banking alliance (NZBA) – a group of banks committing to reaching net zero carbon emissions by 2050. But they’re showing their true colours.

Standard Chartered is one of the banks committing to net-zero by 2050. And recently they’re flexing their green credentials by laying out more strategy for how to reach that target – which will be put to a vote to shareholders at the bank’s 2022 AGM.

And today, Carney is announcing that GFANZ now has $130 trillion dollars committed to net zero. But these huge commitments are a mile wide and an inch deep.

Many of the world’s worst fossil fuel financiers are in GFANZ.

Rishi Sunak just announced plans to make British or UK-listed financial companies publish plans on how they will transition to net zero. He’s setting up an independent task force to define what a proper transition looks like.

Central banks help to set the rules for how the economy works. And no central banks are more important than those of the G20 countries, who are responsible for the vast majority of global emissions.