Extinction Rebellion group storm bank meeting in Dublin in fossil fuel protest

Last Thursday, JP Morgan held a networking event titled ‘Women in Technology’ which saw a number of young protestors intervene.

“There are no women in technology on a dead planet,” one activist said.

Extinction Rebellion is a global environmental movement with the stated aim of using "non-violent civil disobedience to compel government action to avoid tipping points in the climate system, biodiversity loss and the risk of social and ecological collapse.”

The group stated: “When the world’s largest fossil fuel investor, JP Morgan, held a ‘women in technology’ event in Dublin, to demonstrate how inclusive they are, we were on hand to point out the massive hypocrisy of this.

“This week’s IPCC report warned that ‘there is a rapidly closing window of opportunity to secure a liveable and sustainable future for all. The choices and actions implemented in this decade will have impacts now and for thousands of years.”

The protestors point out the banking giant has increased their fossil fuel financing by a staggering ten billion dollars between 2020 – 2021.

“So why are fossil fuels still receiving more funding than sustainable alternatives? JP Morgan make great claims about ‘transitioning to a low carbon economy’ on their website, while increasing fossil fuel financing.

“They claim to care about diversity and inclusion, but women are disproportionately impacted by climate change. 80 pc of people displaced by climate change are women. This leads to violence, sexual violence and human trafficking.

“Fossil fuels cause climate change and it’s endangering the lives of billions of women. Jp Morgan is funding fossil fuels,” the group stated.

According to Forbes, JPMorgan Chase bank contributed more money towards fossil fuel industries than any other bank, putting a total of 268 billion dollars into coal, oil and gas firms between 2016-2020.

In total, the world’s biggest banks have put 2.7 trillion dollars into those industries since the 2015 Paris Agreement, according to a 2020 Banking on Climate Change report.

“Banks are increasingly being recognized as major drivers of the climate crisis—the 2.7 trillion dollars in financing that 35 major global banks poured into fossil fuels since the Paris Agreement makes that quite clear,” said Alison Kirsch, who wrote the report.

“JPMorgan Chase stands out as the world's worst banker of climate chaos by far, year after year. Given this enormous impact on people and the planet, Chase and its peers must take bold measures to end financing for the expansion of the fossil fuel sector, and commit to exiting the sector entirely soon,” she said.

Sunday World has contacted the bank for a response to the protest but nothing was forthcoming at the time of publishing.