NEW YORK—Tensions were high outside of Citigroup’s global headquarters on Friday morning as climate activists blockaded the doors for an hour and hundreds of employees waited in the plaza to get to work.
The demonstration marked the end of the second week of the “Summer of Heat on Wall Street,” a sustained, direct-action campaign targeting financial institutions, with a particular emphasis on Citi for its robust financing of fossil fuel projects, despite stated commitments to a clean energy transition. According to the Banking on Climate Chaos report from the Rainforest Action Network, an advocacy group, Citigroup is the largest financier of companies that expanded fossil fuel projects last year.
This week, youth activists from the Summer of Heat campaign took center stage to critique both the bank’s financing of fossil fuels and its business dealings in Israel during the country’s assault on Gaza, which has killed more than 37,000 Palestinians and displaced nearly 2 million over the past eight months. The activists demand that Citi end all operations in Israel, stop financing arms sales as well as oil, gas and coal projects, and “exponentially” increase financing for renewable energy.
It’s amazing that most people haven’t shown any care about a tunnel being drilled under Stonehenge, threatening their very stability, but spray on some coloured cornflour and are suddenly global lichen experts