1. The Production Gap is terrifying.

Most climate policy is focused on consumption. The Paris Accord is based on each country’s consumption. But oil companies are planning to produce far more fossil fuels than the world is planning to consume — because they’re betting at least some countries will fail to limit consumption.

It’s very hard to stop production for the international market. Activists only have a few options: they can block oil production and transport with their bodies (which is awesome, but isn’t for everybody), pressure governments to regulate production (which the Liberals are unlikely to do) or block the money pipeline. Bank Switch accounts for the production gap by targeting the loans that allow fossil fuel expansion to happen!

2. Divestment Isn’t Enough.

Divestment campaigns have gathered a lot of momentum in recent years and they’re a good thing. Divesting from a company lowers its stock price, but it doesn’t impact the company’s day-to-day balance sheet. Fossil fuel companies can still build new projects even while their stock price is falling if they have access to loans. So we have to stop the loans.

3. CDN Banks are the biggest, baddest fossil fuel funders.

The Big 5 Canadian Banks are all in the top 25 funders of fossil fuels in the world. Since the Paris Agreement they have poured $481 BILLION into their efforts to guarantee a climate apocalypse! Although a few American banks have doled out more money, they are much bigger banks so it represents a smaller percentage of their total lending. The Banking on Climate Change report also tallies up fossil fuel policies – will a bank fund thermal coal? what about arctic drilling or fracking?. In terms of policies, the CDN banks really are the absolute worst: scoring between 0.5 and 3 points out of a possible 200 points! Even horrifically awful American banks like Chase have some standards and score between 15 and 25 out of 200.

4. The Tar Sands are completely reliant on CDN banks.

Among those especially dangerous fossil fuel projects that US banks are backing away from are the Tar Sands. Tar Sands oil has especially high CO2 intensity per barrel. That’s because it takes a lot of energy to get the oil out of the sand, so companies burn natural gas to get it out! Even global oil companies are starting to worry about their carbon footprint – so they’re moving their money from high CO2 oil to lower CO2 oil. Foreign money is fleeing from the tar sands as fast as it can — without the CDN banks it would be completely dead.

5. CDN banks are feeling the pressure.

BankSwitch isn’t the first campaign to call out CDN banks. Toronto350 and others have been holding them to account for years. RBC hates being known as the dirtiest CDN bank and just last month they made a lot of noise about a minor update to their thermal coal policies. The new policy doesn’t have much material impact because of the way it is worded, but it shows that RBC is willing to make changes to improve its image.