Casten, Schatz, 14 Others Call on Megabank CEOs to End Funding to Organizations Peddling Climate Disinformation
Washington, D.C. — Today, U.S. Congressman Sean Casten (IL-06) and U.S. Senator Brian Schatz (D-HI) led 14 of their colleagues in a letter to the CEOs of JPMorgan Chase and Wells Fargo urging them to end their sponsorship of the State Financial Officers Foundation (SFOF), a dark money group that has been weaponizing state treasurers and lawmakers against climate-related financial risk management by coordinating to cancel contracts and otherwise sever ties with financial firms that consider climate change in their business strategies.
The letter follows a recent Financial Services Committee hearing in which Rep. Casten questioned JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon and Wells Fargo CEO Charles Scharf regarding their companies’ sponsorship of SFOF. The CEOs said they would likely end their support of the SFOF if it was true the group was spreading misinformation and attempting to prevent the financial sector from freely allocating capital.
“We are troubled that the SFOF would promote an approach to market regulation that attempts to frame climate-smart investing as a “boycott” of the fossil fuel industry or other sectors,” the lawmakers wrote. “This is not only a gross misrepresentation of valid steps that banks and asset managers are taking to measure and minimize their exposure to climate risks and comply with the expectations of their regulators and investors; it also places workers’ retirements at risk by encouraging pension funds and other asset owners to do business only with banks and investment managers that ignore proven methods of risk analysis.”
Other signatories include Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-MA), Senator Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI), Reps. Kathy Castor (FL-14), Mike Levin (CA-49), Bobby Rush (IL-01), Stephen Lynch (MA-08), Doris Matsui (CA-06), Don McEachin (VA-04), Chuy Garcia (IL-04), Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (NY-14), Barbara Lee (CA-13), Alan Lowenthal (CA-47), Jared Huffman (CA-02), Katie Porter (CA-45), and Suzanne Bonamici (OR-01).
In August, the New York Times reported that SFOF has been at the forefront of a coordinated attack on climate financial action by Republican state treasurers.
Six states have passed model legislation called the "Energy Discrimination Elimination Act," which seeks to punish financial institutions that are deemed to be "boycotting" fossil fuels. These laws led West Virginia’s treasurer to falsely claim that certain large financial institutions are boycotting fossil fuels, and cancel contracts worth hundreds of millions of dollars with Wells Fargo, Morgan Stanley, JPMorgan Chase, and Goldman Sachs. Nationally, these laws are having their intended “chilling effect” on financial institutions, have turned out to be a nightmare of implementation, and are proving costly for the public and municipalities.
The letter has been endorsed by the League of Conservation Voters, Sunrise Project, Public Citizen, Americans for Financial Reform, the Natural Resources Defense Council, Evergreen Action, and Ceres.
The letter to JPMorgan Chase can be found here, and the letter to Wells Fargo can be found here.
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