Banks Continue to Prop Up the Fossil Fuel Industry

The hypocrisy of the world’s biggest banks on climate change keeps mounting. Last month, the British-based Bureau of Investigative Journalism (TBIJ) reported that London-based HSBC, one of the world’s top-10 biggest banks, has helped raise $47 billion for the fossil fuel industry since its 2022 announcement that it would not finance new gas and oil infrastructure.

Some of HSBC’s dealings were on behalf of Saudi Aramco, the world’s second-ranked company in Fortune’s Global 500 and often dubbed the world’s biggest polluter for being the largest corporate emitter of greenhouse gases. In response to the report, the bank told TBIJ that its investments remain “science-based,” under a presumption that “net zero-aligned scenarios require continued, though declining, financing of fossil fuel supplies to meet energy demand, security, and affordability during the…