Less than three weeks ago, on December 23, in a post on optimism about the potential demise of the green energy fantasy, I took note that two of the largest U.S. banks had just quit something called the “Net Zero Banking Alliance.” The two were Goldman Sachs and Wells Fargo. These two banks, along with many others, including all of the biggest ones, had joined the NZBA as it was getting organized under auspices of the UN back in 2021. NZBA, together with other related groups organized around the same time, aspired to be cartels of financial institutions that would save the planet by starving hydrocarbon fuels of all investment capital, while re-directing the money to the “green” energy transition. Now, shortly after the re-election of Donald Trump, two of the biggest banking giants had decided to exit. Could this be a sign that the zero-carbon green energy fantasy was losing its grip?
In the short 19 days since that post, the trickle of resignations from the NZBA and related groups has turned into an avalanche. In the blink of an eye, what once seemed a serious threat that hydrocarbon fuels could be snuffed out by a group boycott of investors has almost entirely gone away.
More on the latest developments later in this post. But first, some history of NZBA and the related alphabet soup of do-gooders.
2021 was the year that the UN’s big climate confab, known as the “Conference of Parties” or “COP,” was to be held in Glasgow, Scotland. Although the COPs are normally held every year, there had not been one in 2020 due to the Covid pandemic. After the year hiatus, COP-26 was ultimately held from October 31 to November 13, 2021. Boris Johnson, Prime Minister of the UK, who had converted from one-time climate skeptic to all-in alarmist, was determined to make this COP-26 the be-all and end-all of all COPs. The swarms of little aspiring tyrants in UN bureaucracies, just off their hugely successful Covid power grabs, were ready to flex their new muscles in the climate arena.
In the many months of preparations for the Glasgow conference, the UN got the bright idea of organizing all of the world’s big financial institutions into cartels to direct their capital to an “energy transition” and away from hydrocarbon fuels. To achieve this goal, in April 2021 there was formed an entity called the Glasgow Financial Alliance for Net Zero, or GFANZ. According to its website:
The Glasgow Financial Alliance for Net Zero (GFANZ) brings together leading financial institutions and other financial services sector participants who have individually decided to support the objectives of mobilizing capital and addressing the barriers companies face to scaling decarbonization. . . . GFANZ was founded to establish a forum for addressing and catalysing action toward the sector-wide challenges and opportunities associated with the net-zero transition.
The moving force behind this initiative appears to have been a guy named Mark Carney. Have you heard of him? Here is a picture of him from the GFANZ website:
Carney is a native Canadian, and a big-time guru in the central banking world: he was the Governor of the Bank of Canada from 2008 to 2013, and then promptly moved to become the Governor of the Bank of England from 2013 to 2020 (the first non-Brit to hold that position). Along the way, Carney became one of the top evangelists of the climate alarm religion. Upon leaving the Bank of England, he hopped over to the UN, where he got the highfalutin title of “Special Envoy on Climate Action and Finance.” According to its website, “GFANZ was launched in April 2021 by UN Special Envoy on Climate Action and Finance Mark Carney and the COP26 presidency to accelerate the transition to a net-zero global economy.”
Carney became the Chair of GFANZ. By the time of COP-26 in November 2021, Carney had also recruited to join him as Co-Chair none other than the ultimate climate hypocrite, Mike Bloomberg (of the seven houses and eight private aircraft). According to the GFANZ website, the two remain Co-Chairs today.
GFANZ was then instrumental in organizing a series of subsidiary groups divided by industry sector. Relevant to today’s post are the NZBA (formed contemporaneously with GFANZ in April 2021), and the Net Zero Asset Managers Initiative, NZAMI, which actually had been launched a little earlier in December 2020.
Both the NZBA and the NZAMI were rapidly successful in recruiting to their membership essentially all the biggest names in their industry sectors. The missions statements of the groups are written in a bureaucratic style that makes them difficult to understand, but it is clear at least that the idea is to stop the financing of the hydrocarbon fuel industry. For example, here is the first item of the “Commitment Statement” of the NZAB:
Transition the operational and attributable greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from their lending and investment portfolios to align with pathways to net-zero by 2050 or sooner.
Which brings me to the latest developments: The exits from the NZAB of Goldman Sachs and Wells Fargo in early December quickly opened the barn doors for the other big players to rush out. On December 31, Reuters reported that Citibank and Bank of America had just quit the NZAB. Morgan Stanley announced its exit on January 2. JP Morgan quit on January 7. These six big banks among them have a market share of more than 25% of the entire U.S. banking industry.
And then, just yesterday, the largest asset manager in the country, BlackRock, quit the NZAMI. Of the three largest asset managers, another one, Vanguard, had already quit back in 2022. That leaves only State Street remaining, of the big three.
Meanwhile, in case you are wondering what is going on with Mark Carney, he appears to be a leading candidate for leader of Canada’s Liberal Party now that Justin Trudeau has quit. The CBC, in a piece yesterday, says that Carney has the backing of some 30 Liberal MPs. That would mean that Carney could become the next Prime Minister of Canada, should the Liberals win the election expected to be held some time this year. On the other hand, according to the latest polls, it looks like the Liberals are headed toward one of the most decisive wipe-outs in the history of Canada. This poll, from CBC News on January 6, concludes that if the election were held that day, the Conservatives would win approximately 227 seats to the Liberals’ 44 (in a Parliament of 338).
So Carney may get a chance to test how well the climate alarm message continues to sell to the Canadian voter. So far, it’s not looking good.
It would be interesting to tie Carney to Trudeau and sink both.
A Carney and a clown. They could make a circus.
Very good, Scissor. btw, They ARE.
Is the objective a reduction in atmospheric CO2? They are all clever people. Have they looked at the Keeling curve? Or considered Asian coal burning? Perhaps they did – which means they are all complicit in a massive fraud. BoJo too. Of course. What happened at COP27? I forget
The annual quantity of CO2 emissions have been increasin\ng since the first COP meeting in 1995.
It is obvious the COP meetings cause MORE CO2 emissions. Defiitely a lot of hot air.
COP changing name to
Climate
Liars
Annual
Party
or
CLAP
Annual report will be
The CLAPTRAP Report
New CLAP logo will be the Michael Mann Tree Ring Circus Hockey Stink Chart
“What happened at COP27? I forget”
Large amounts of fuel were used to run the show,
even more fuel for global transport to get there,
colossal amounts of booze & food were consumed
& 1,000s of ‘sex workers’ gave their all … to save the planet.!!
Hmm. am I going to hear about this on the nightly news? Of course I’d have to tune to find out, as I usually walk out of the room when CBS and Norah O’Donnell put out their 30 minutes of propaganda every night.
Well will you look at that, she’s leaving LINK (I Googled her name to get correct spelling)
The BBC has not mentioned any of this either.
Too busy promoting the LGBT agenda. On Sunday morning’s TV news programme (No idea what it’s called. Only heard it because I was staying at somebody else’s house.) they had a very long item on the 25th anniversary of the armed forces’s decision to allow LGBT people to belong to the armed forces. They also managed to quote some person horrified at the forthcoming presidency of DT in their report about the Los Angeles fires.
Watch the BBC for LA Fire News? If I want to see empty hose in LA I’ll watch The Kardashians.
Taking her storytelling to even greater extremes.
Scrambling for the exit, fleeing the RICO and anti-trust prosecutions coming up.
Running out of other people’s money.
The bottom line is we don’t know how much money these banks were lending to the alternative energy industry in the past. And we certainly don’t know how much alternative energy lending they will do in the future. Without those data, all we have is a series of bank press releases, and our conservative wishful thinking. Press releases that a careful read reveals do NOT sound like the banks are getting out of the alternative energy lending business.
Color me suspicious that this is bank virtue signaling to impress the new Trump majority. Rather than a significant change in lending policy.
DETAILS:
Is this banker BS or a real change of lending policy. I read a few bank news releases and they sounded too woke to me. I began to think this might be far less than it seemed.
As a blog editor, I always think:
How do I know that is true?
I want data, not just predictions, or a popular narrative. I want to see actions, not just words.
My Editor Theory (Nobel Prize pending) is half of what we read is BS and the hard job is determining which half. There is a lot of lying and misleading in the news. And not all by leftists.
I am suspicious of:
(1) Banks actually getting out of the alternative energy lending business.
(2) Corporations that never supported Trump donating money to his inauguration, which seem like bribes to me
(3) Corporations announcing they have rejected DEI
(4) Trump talking like a dictator, threatening to take over the Panama Canal, etc. … and falsely claiming Panama overcharge US ships.
(5) Elon Musk acting as an America First CEO when he has HUGE financial conflicts of interest: SpaceX gets half its revenues from the US government. And the EV tax credits keep Ford and GM’s EV divisions barely alive, while Tesla EVs can survive without them.
They say Missouri is the “Show Me” State. I’ve never been to Missouri, but I’m a Show Me Guy.
Our governor, Gregg Abbot, is probably the keystone for this rapid departure from the banks. They informed him that they were withholding funds from the oil and gas industry. He informed them that they were no longer welcome in the great state of Texas and began closing pension funds and banking accounts. That got their attention. Then the lawsuits over their fiduciary responsibilities started pouring in. Yesterday, I saw where an American Airlines employee has filed a lawsuit against AA and Blackrock over the mishandling of their 401ks due to the ESG focus of Blackrock. All of these crooks were headed for real problems, especially after Trumps victory. The ship of state has begun a 180 turn and the country with it. The progressive Angelinos are seeing that bad policy can even affect them and will be turning to the right.
Don’t underestimate the stupidity of liberal Canadians. Media will fall over themselves as to how wonderful Carney is…
He did a lot of damage to the UK economy by allowing a cheap money bubble to grow by refusing to raise interest rates once to 2008 crisis was far behind us. He set targets for raising rates then every time they were reached he moved the goal posts. Just as stupid as the Chancellor that employed him – Boy George Osborne best remembered for his ‘pasty tax’ and screwing up the housing market with his stamp duty changes.
I believe “the media” in Canada is Government Media, so..nothing new.
It might not be clear to a few that “banking” and “assets” do not have the same players;
Net Zero Banking Alliance, NZBA
Net Zero Asset Managers Initiative, NZAMI
Hollywood Elitist Leonardo DiCaprio and Girlfriend Flee LA Wildfires on Private Jet, Sparking Backlash Over ‘Climate Warrior’ Hypocrisy
https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2025/01/hollywood-elitist-leonardo-dicaprio-girlfriend-flee-la-wildfires/
Surprising he won’t be sticking it out in LA.
He’s a phony baloney plastic banana Summer Soldier in the “War on GlowBULL Warming.”
Only sticking it out when with his girlfriend…. (bad doggy)
According to the article, DiCaprio’s real girlfriend is 26 years old, so he appears to be relaxing his standards. On the other hand, if he reverts to form, I’m pretty sure Greta is under 25.
Well, he probably loves “Comet Pizza” and is on both the Epstein and Diddy lists.
Song title suggestion for the theme music of the Investigations into the multiple inter-related Climate Scams and Grifts: “RICO Don’t Lose That Number” by STEALY Dan.
Falling apart…
Red Ed’s agenda sending one of the UK’s major industries up in smoke…
…
the company shut down a site that uses natural gas to produce ethanol for crucial medical uses, as cheaper imports from countries like Pakistan mean Britain can’t keep up. Ratcliffe didn’t blow any hot air, saying de-industrialising Britain has done “nothing for the environment. It merely shifts production and emissions elsewhere.”
https://order-order.com/2025/01/13/labour-warned-net-zero-killing-chemical-industry/
One way to tell that the enviro-weanie movement has receded is popular entertainment.
One of the most highly regarded and popular new series to come out in the last year is “Landman”, produced and streamed by Paramount + (the streaming version of CBS). The setting is the West Texas “oil patch”, and the key characters are oil men and women. The star of the show is one of the greatest actors of the last three decades, Billy Bob Thornton, and the main supporting actor is Jon Hamm, star of many hit TV series including “Mad Men”.
What is simply astounding, aside from the realistic actions and dialogue in the West Texas oil patch (where I spent four years a decade ago), is the unapologetic skewering of green energy, environmentalists, the politics thereof, and in particular skewering of the utterly impractical “alternative energy” fable. I’ve never heard anything remotely like this in the popular media, ever.
The closest thing to this kind of truth telling on this subject was “State of Fear” by the late great Michael Crighton, for which I’ve been waiting vainly for the last two decades to see a feature film or TV series adaptation.
Maybe that day is coming?
When it becomes OK to talk about something in the non-politically correct way, and not get cancelled by the major media, you know that something has really changed.
By the way, Landman is just a great show with superb acting and realistic dialogue (meaning, real people in West Texas actually talk and think that way!). And you’re likely to come away learning a lot about how petroleum actually gets produced in America.
Yes, Landman also highlights the high-risk nature of oil drilling, not just the worksites dangerous activities, but also the capital investments risks.
Technology may provide useful guides about accessibility of drilling rigs to oil deposits, but many are still a “bust”, where the financiers of the speculative enterprise lose their shirts.
(Of course, greenies never appreciate these risks as they wear their virtue-signalling clothing brands, totally ignorant of the fact that without oil, they would be wearing only cotton or hemp attire)
In 2020 The North Face refused to make company branded jackets for Innovex Downhole Solutions, an oil field services contractor. In 2021 The North Face refused to make co-branded jackets with Liberty Oilfield Services LLC.
The North Face uses a lot of synthetic materials in their clothing, those materials are made from crude oil.
I haven’t been following the banking things closely but did read the ‘exit’ announcements of a few banks. My impression is they stated they were dropping the memberships but were still intending to continue the same practices on their own.
I can’t see how all these national/international councils or cartels or what ever they are called aren’t the very definition of a trust. You know the kind of trust that our antitrust legislation was created to fight against.
Carney has already given such a boost to the Liberals that the latest preliminary election polls show them firmly entrenched as also-rans among voter preferences. The Conservatives are favored by 44.5% of those surveyed, the Liberals by 21.5%, and the NDP 18.1%. This should be no surprise as Carney appears to be little more than a clone of Trudeau who also favors the carbon taxes so reviled by the majority of Canadians, particularly since they aren’t coming close for the country to reach its emissions reduction targets but continue to drive up the cost of living.
Already known but a great reminder, this man is knee deep in WEF and GFANZ, a Global Net Zero Financial Cartel. Simply put, he is no friend of Canada and has his own agenda; sorta like the last guy ;).
“sorta”?
I’d rather have Art Carney.