Three Rockefellers Say Banks Must Stop Financing Fossil Fuels

Adriana Zehbrauskas for The New York Times One hundred years ago, as a deadly influenza gripped the world and the stock market dropped precipitously, our great-grandfather John D. Rockefeller Jr. began investing in New York banks to diversify the family’s business away from fossil fuels in the midst of the economic uncertainty. The result was the beginning of our family’s century-long association with what is today JPMorgan Chase, known in its earlier incarnation as the “Rockefeller Bank.” The similarities today are striking. A pandemic has killed more than a million people across the world and shows no signs of abating, and unease surrounds the economy. But that anxiety is not merely a consequence of the pandemic. The long-term outlook for the economy is clouded by a warming climate and its foreseen consequences. A task force for the Commodity Futures Trading Commission put it succinctly in a recent report : “Climate change poses a major risk to the stability of the U.S. financial system and to its ability to sustain the American economy.” That’s why the world’s biggest banks should do what our great-grandfather began to do in 1920 to spread the risks to his investments (though climate change was […]

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