Activists Demanding UK’s Barclays to ‘Stop Funding the Climate Emergency’ Shut Down Nearly 100 Branches

In a coordinated action to pressure Barclays to stop financing climate destruction, Greenpeace activists on Monday morning shut down 97 of the British investment bank’s branches across the United Kingdom. “Barclays must stop funding the climate emergency; that’s why we’ve taken action today,” Morten Thaysen, climate finance campaigner at Greenpeace U.K., said in a statement. “From floods to bushfires and record heat in Antarctica, the impacts of this crisis are staring us in the face. Yet Barclays keeps pumping billions into fossil fuel companies at exactly the time we need to stop backing these polluting businesses.” “Banks are just as responsible for the climate emergency as the fossil fuel companies they fund, yet they’re escaped scrutiny for years,” Thaysen added. “We’ve shut down branches across the country to shine a spotlight on Barclays’ role in bankrolling this emergency. It’s time Barclays pulled the plug and backed away from funding fossil fuels for good.”

Disconnecting the fossil fuel industry from its sources of capital is key to driving the transition to clean energy, as it drives up their cost of capital for fossil enterprises, thus making them less attractive financially. Here, we see that protests are effective, as has been the divestment movement, where enormous institutions from university endowments to the retirement funds of entire countries have sold off their assets in all extractive activities.