Emission impossible
The decision by all major US banks to pull out of a key climate alliance is the latest example of how Trump's re-election has accelerated corporate America's ESG reversal.
Corporate America is continuing its capitulation to Trump-era politics, with JP Morgan Chase last night becoming the latest major bank to abandon the UN’s Net-Zero Banking Alliance (NZBA). All the big US banks have now pulled out.
While this comes a day after Mark Zuckerberg pre-empted backlash around another Trump bête noire — fact checking on social media — climate change action, and particularly its vocal proponents, have been under fire in the US for some time now.
Notably, BlackRock founder Larry Fink last year shifted his position from “climate risk is investment risk” to a more tepid “energy pragmatism” as he came under a barrage of criticism and legal threats from the right.
The NZBA was established in 2021 by 43 global banks and then continuously expanded its membership over the next three years. NZBA members are committed to aligning their lending, investment and capital markets activities with net-zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050.
