World’s worst banker of fossil fuels, JPMorgan Chase, under fire in Palm Beach for outsized role in funding the climate crisis.
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Palm Beach, FL –– Activists disrupted JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon at a speaking engagement in West Palm Beach due to the bank’s financing of climate change. Fort Lauderdale Food Not Bombs, Lake Worth Food Not Bombs and Everglades Earth First!, and Rainforest Action Network (RAN), stormed the Society of the Four Arts’ event, “an afternoon with Jamie Dimon,” with a message that JPMorgan Chase’s massive funding of fossil fuels is driving the climate crisis, and it’s putting Florida at risk. According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association (NOAA), the very venue Dimon was scheduled to speak at is under direct threat of sea-level rise.
“Our coastal community can no longer afford to put our head in the sand,” said Ruddy Turnstone, Florida resident who participated in the disruption. “By continuing to pour billions into fossil fuels, Dimon is smiling at our faces as his profits put our homes underwater.”
RAN and a growing international network of groups have disrupted Jamie Dimon nearly a dozen times in the past two years; most recently in Los Angeles. In the past two weeks, over 650,000 people around the world have signed a petition “to immediately stop financing the expansion of fossil fuels.” In January, actress Jane Fonda along with the #StopTheMoneyPipeline coalition, broadcast a public and direct message to Dimon to stop funding fossil fuels.
Since the Paris Agreement, JPMorgan Chase has provided $196 billion in finance for fossil fuels. According to the Banking on Climate Change 2019 report, Chase is by far the world’s worst banker of fossil fuels and fossil fuel expansion, making them the worst banker of climate change.
“Jamie Dimon needs to reckon with the fact that Chase has lost their social license to continue business as usual, because any bank that continues to fund the expansion of fossil fuels is culpable in driving the climate crisis, ” said Ruth Breech, Senior Campaigner at Rainforest Action Network. “Our message is getting louder by the second.”
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