Mississippi Attorney General Lynn Fitch said last week that she has joined 18 other state attorneys general who want more information about the commitment of six large banks to be part of the Net-Zero Banking Alliance.
Fitch said the AGs have served the banks with something called civil investigative demands, which the press release says act as a subpoena. They seek documents and information about the banks’ involvement with a financial group set up by the United Nations to reduce carbon emissions and climate change.
According to the press release, Net-Zero member banks must set emissions reductions targets in their lending and investment portfolios. The goal is that by 2050 — 28 years from now — the banks’ money will be evenly balanced between companies or individuals that put greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, and those that remove the gases.
The fact that banks and other companies have wide discretion to set corporate goals and policies does not seem to register with the 19 attorneys general.
“The Net-Zero Banking Alliance’s political agenda does not align with American economic interests,” Fitch said in her press release.“These banks need to understand that they are accountable to American laws and investors, not UN bureaucrats and UN standards.”
It is difficult to see how the banks will be unaccountable to American laws or investors by getting involved with a global climate-change prevention program. The banks may well be doing it to get a little positive publicity, as in, “We’re part of the solution,” but you can be sure they’re not planning to lose money on this. Making money is how these banks — Bank of America, Citigroup, Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan Chase, Morgan Stanley, and Wells Fargo — got to be so big in the first place.
The press release included some of the questions in the civil investigative demands. There are a couple of long, Faulkner-like sentences that were written by lawyers and can only be answered by other lawyers, who no doubt will use a similarly opaque style of writing.
But the most entertaining question asked the banks to identify the objectives and mission of the Net-Zero Banking Alliance and describe how these objectives have been incorporated into the bank’s operations.
To save everyone a little time, information on the banking alliance is available at the website www.unepfi.org/net-zero-banking/ . Its home page says participants currently represent about 40% of global banking assets that have committed to financing net-zero emissions three decades from now.
The alliance does not hide its plans. The goal is to support “decarbonization strategies” and says banks, which control a lot of the world’s money, will play a key role in this transition.
It is interesting that the attorneys general are so confident that such an agenda does not align with American interests. If they’re so sure, their view into the future is more clear than most.
— Jack Ryan, McComb Enterprise-Journal
