CLIMATE FIRST! INC

With the release of a U.N. panel's scientific report in October 2018, it was clear that the world's nations had 12 years to dramatically cut back on greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, or face a (possible) existential crisis. Despite signing the Paris Climate Accord in late 2015, most governments hadn't taken the issue seriously enough. And now the world faced a dire situation.

When the Fossil Fuel Finance Report Card 2019 "hit the newsstands", we learned that most of the private sector banks around the world hadn't been taking the impending climate crisis seriously enough either. The report, authored by Rainforest Action Network (RAN) and others, found that in the three years since the Paris Climate Accord was signed, 33 private sector banks around the world invested $1.9 trillion into fossil fuel projects and companies. And not surprisingly, U.S. banks led the way with JPMorgan Chase, Wells Fargo, Citi, and Bank of America taking the top four slots in financing the climate-wrecking fuels. This alarming investment behavior by the banks vis-a-vis fossil fuels continued into subsequent years.

In its "#DefundClimateChange" campaign, Climate First! had been confronting Wells Fargo for over two years over its investments in fossil fuel projects such as the Keystone XL pipeline. However, with JPMorgan Chase leading, by a wide margin, all the banks in the world over the past four plus years in funding fossil fuel projects, we decided to make JPMorgan Chase our target in this campaign.

Join Climate First! as we organize peaceful direct actions against JPMorgan Chase bank branches in the Mid-Atlantic region.