Rule number one of banking school, don’t upset Stephen Fry.
Why is Stephen angry?!
A tonne of celebrities (including Stephen š³) and thousands of people across the country are sending a powerful message to the UK’s big 5 banks. In fact, the banks got a rather rude awakening in the form of a huge open letter, thousands of tweets, a bunch of headlines and a few morning news shows watched by millions.
All with one message: Banks must stop lending billions to fossil fuel companies.
More and more people around the country are learning that banks are loaning billions to the fossil fuel companies profiting off the cost of living crisis and funding climate destruction.
Barclays are the worst of the fossil fuel banks
Barclays is the biggest funder of fossil fuels in all of Europe. And they get singled out as the worst in the UK inĀ Sky News, TheĀ BBC, TheĀ TimesĀ andĀ The Guardian. Oh and in hundreds of actions up and down the country. Remember to spare a thought for the Barclays PR team, then remember to forget it.
Barclays claim to be leading the charge to a sustainable future. They put wind turbines all over their ads. But they’ve got their fingerprints on some of the worst fossil fuel companies in the world, including Shell, Exxon, and scandal-strewn Adani. In fact, it was just shown that of all the money Barclays lends to energy companies, only 2% goes to genuinely green energy. The rest goes to fossil fuels.
View this post on Instagram
So what now?
Well, thanks to pressure from the climate movement, HSBC committed to not lending any more money to new oil and gas fields. But it’s nowhere near enough. Banks are still at the beck and call of fossil fuel companies, and they’re piling billions into the climate destroying companies.
That’s why this is just the start. As more people find out about the banks, they’ll be under more and more pressure to kick their fossil fuel addiction for good. And the sooner they start, the less of a headache we’ll give em. We promise š