XR Tas protests ANZ funding for fossil fuels
Extinction Rebellion Australia, 14 Nov 2024
XR Northern Tasmania rebels have been revisiting the ANZ - Australia's biggest overall funder of fossil fuels since the Paris Agreement.
XR Tas Rebels paid a visit to the ANZ Bank yesterday with placards and flyers for distribution to onlookers. The action was a follow-up to the previous week's sit-in. The flyers reminded everyone that in a sane world, the ANZ could contribute benefits instead of damage to the Tasmanian community and Australia. Deposits and funds could be invested in renewable energy such as wind farms, solar installations, pumped hydro and green hydrogen rather than the catastrophically harmful production of coal, gas and oil.
ANZ Bank has continued to invest over $20 billion in gas, coal and oil since 2015. Its actions are stealing the future of humanity's next generations for short-term profit.
Leading climate experts in the International Energy Agency and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change agree that achieving the Paris Agreement's climate change goals requires that there should be no new coal, oil, or gas developments.
Yet Australia's big four banks have poured more that AUS$61 billion into fossil fuels since the global agreement to limit climate change was adopted in Paris in 2015.
See the July 2024 report by Market Forces Big four Australian banks pour $3.6 billion into fossil fuels in 2023
The ANZ and Westpac are both contributing to a fossil gas lock-in across Asia that threatens to derail the rapid clean energy transition that we must have if the world is to meet global climate goals.
Rebels in Northern Tasmania are not letting ANZ forget the human and environmental cost of its investment policies.
Scott Bell and Jeff McKinnon were both arrested in the sit-in protest at the ANZ Bank on 7th November and charged with trespass and failure to comply with a direction of a police officer (see main photo). They have been bailed, and will appear in courts in December. A condition of their bail condition is that they must not enter any ANZ bank between now and their court appearance. See related Facebook story and Instagram reel.
