While ASB prides itself on being “proactive in measuring and reducing [its] own environmental footprint”, parent company Commonwealth Bank has loaned over $1.5 billion Australian dollars to coal and gas export ports along Australia’s East Coast since 2008.
It’s not a pleasant feeling, learning that your bank – the custodian of your money – is lending billions of dollars to projects that damage the environment and drive climate change. But the good news is that, by working together, we can change this.
By withdrawing our money, or “divesting”, from the banks that are funding carbon pollution, we are removing the social license of companies that pollute our atmosphere and block political action on climate change. Instead, we can choose to move our money to banks that are 100% fossil fuel free, or at least free of the 200 largest fossil fuel companies on the planet.
Write to ASB CEO, Barbara Chapman, and let her know that you are putting ASB on notice.