Funds for fossil-fuel burning will leave bank money burnt

Destruction caused by climate change will offset short-term gains

- MARK GONGLOFF

If you come home early from vacation and find robbers ransacking your house, you could call the police and try to stop the crime. But the true alpha move would be to help the robbers load your valuables onto their truck and then tell them which of your neighbors are also on holiday in exchange for a cut of their profits.

Banks seem to be choosing the alpha option by abetting theft from themselves in backing new projects to extract and burn fossil fuels, thus stoking global warming that stunts economic growth and their own insurance and mortgage businesses. Of course, these financial companies do get a cut of the short-term profits from this environmental sabotage. And by abandoning the pretense of siding with the planet's future, they avoid political blowback from a US government that has declared war on it. But the long-term result will be a global economy trillions of dollars poorer and far less stable, impoverishing just about everyone, including banks.

The world's 65 biggest banks delivered $869.4 billion in finance to fossil-fuel companies last year, up $162.5 billion from 2023. Banks have funneled $7.9 trillion in loans and underwriting to these polluting industries since the Paris climate accord took effect in 2016. This doesn't include any investments by banks' asset-management units, which amount to hundreds of billions of dollars more.