US (STOP THE MONEY PIPELINE) : We have a huge opportunity to move US banks on climate.

 

The movement to stop the financing of fossil fuels needs your help. If Wall Street banks continue to fund fossil fuels at the current rate, we are guaranteed to face devastating impacts. Right now, we need to do everything we can to prevent further fossil fuel expansion, and accelerate the transition to a sustainable economy. Donate now to Stop the Money Pipeline to support the movement to end fossil fuels. We have a plan to win which has taken years of research and strategic experimentation to develop. Back in 2021, I was hired by Stop the Money Pipeline to organize bank customers of the largest fossil fuel-funding banks ― Chase, Citi, Wells Fargo, and Bank of America ― to advocate for climate justice at their bank. After organizing 20,000+ customers to take action, we realized this was only a drop in the bucket for these global banks. So we asked ourselves, what would it take to get the banks to move? After seeing the labor movement successfully win concessions from huge corporations and watching Republican attorneys general divest huge amounts of capital away from BlackRock for its minimal ESG policies, causing financial institutions to backslide on their climate policies ― it became clear: Wall Street banks only care about one thing: money. So how do we threaten or disrupt their revenue? Support strategic research and organizing at Stop the Money Pipeline today. That’s when we did what we do best: we brought a coalition of organizations together to conduct research and propose strategies that are built on past movement successes. And what did we come up with? A campaign to organize not individual customers, but large institutional ones. Here’s what we discovered: credit cards are one of the most profitable markets for global banks. And banks like Citibank rely heavily on co-branded credit card partners to secure big chunks of the credit card market. In fact, Costco, which has a co-branded credit card with Citibank, accounts for almost 16% of Citi’s entire credit card business. And Costco has shown again and again that it’s committed to being a socially responsible business. If we can show Costco that it can choose a credit card that is more aligned with its own values and climate commitments, we can put pressure on Citibank and the entire banking sector to move away from fossil fuels. And now we know: there are better, greener credit card partners for climate responsible companies like Costco. Our new report, Better Options: How Large Companies and Nonprofits Can Select Climate-aligned Credit Card Partners, reveals there are large credit card companies like American Express and Synchrony that don’t fund fossil fuels, and are large enough to handle Costco’s business. Now, we have a rare opportunity to push large companies to do something that is both aligned with ambitious climate targets and is feasible. The Better Options report was built on years of research and organizing: keep our movement going by contributing to Stop the Money Pipeline today. In the last four years since I’ve been hired at STMP, we have built a robust campaign at Costco and accomplished key milestones, like organizing 40,000 Costco members, showing up at Costco warehouses and headquarters, meeting with Costco’s CEO in October of 2024 and continuing to engage with leadership since then. But to take this campaign over the finish line and get Costco and other large clients to act: we need your support. Stop the Money Pipeline is unique in that we don’t participate in symbolic protest and organizing: we hit our targets where it actually hurts - in their pocketbooks. Donate today to support strategic research-driven organizing. In Strength and Solidarity, - Sarah Lasoff, Stop the Money Pipeline.