Scores of local weather activists gathered outdoors Citigroup Inc.’s headquarters in downtown Manhattan on Monday, to mark what they are saying is the start of a months-long marketing campaign to attempt to disrupt operations on the financial institution.
Greater than 20 protesters had been arrested, in accordance with a spokeswoman for the New York Metropolis Police Division. Citigroup staff had been nonetheless capable of enter the constructing.
Protesters have dubbed their marketing campaign the Summer season of Warmth. On a web site replete with slogans corresponding to “Scorching Folks Hate Wall St.” and “Eat the Wealthy,” the authors of this system say their main aim is to get banks to cease financing coal, oil and fuel initiatives. The web site states that the group will likely be “going onerous all summer season lengthy. Week after week. Month after month.”
Organizers say they’re singling out Citigroup not simply due to what they view as its unacceptable help of the fossil-fuel trade, however as a result of they assume they’re extra more likely to make an impression on the financial institution than on lots of its friends.
“It’s a drastic measure for a drastic second,” Alec Connon, co-director of the Cease the Cash Pipeline coalition of greater than 230 environmental nonprofits which are a part of the marketing campaign in opposition to Citigroup, mentioned earlier than the protests bought underway.
Alice Hu, a senior local weather campaigner at New York Communities for Change, says protesters will measure their success primarily based on Citigroup’s response. If the financial institution must barricade its international headquarters or tells workers to remain at dwelling, “then we have now already gained,” she mentioned earlier than the protests began.
Citigroup respects the best to protest, however doesn’t condone disruptive or aggressive ways, mentioned Ed Skyler, the financial institution’s head of enterprise providers and public affairs, throughout an interview on Friday.
“We now have an open door for constructive engagement, but when the intent is to attempt to intimidate staff or forestall them from attending to work, that’s not very productive and doesn’t do a lot for his or her trigger,” Skyler mentioned earlier than the protests.
Local weather activists behind the deliberate protests check with a report titled Banking on Local weather Chaos, which says Citigroup has supplied $204 billion to purchasers increasing the manufacturing of fossil fuels because the Paris local weather settlement was signed in late 2015. That’s greater than another Wall Avenue financial institution, in accordance with the report. An evaluation by a gaggle referred to as Reclaim Finance has made comparable claims.
The finance trade has supplied appreciable pushback in opposition to the methodology underlying the analysis.
Information compiled by Bloomberg ranks Citigroup because the sixth-largest supplier of loans to grease, fuel and coal because the Paris settlement. Nevertheless, Citigroup’s fossil-fuel lending has steadily receded in recent times. Because the starting of 2022, for instance, the financial institution ranks No. 10.
On her first day as CEO in early 2021, Chief Govt Officer Jane Fraser dedicated Citigroup to a 2050 net-zero emissions aim. She’s additionally sought to place the financial institution as a local weather chief, with Citigroup’s web site referring to efforts to assist decarbonize purchasers as a part of a program to include “the rules of sustainability” throughout its enterprise.
In the meantime, Citigroup is amongst banks to have been blacklisted in largely Republican states together with West Virginia and Texas, the place GOP lawmakers have accused it of “boycotting” the fossil-fuel trade.
“There’s strain from either side and what we have now to do is attempt to discover the very best path for us,” mentioned Skyler.
As one of many world’s most lively international banks, Citigroup is not any stranger to making ready for bodily disruption. The financial institution has been capable of preserve its operations in war-torn Ukraine, at the same time as others withdrew. Citigroup additionally operates in Haiti, the place the US has despatched navy personnel to assist sort out the extreme preventing.
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