One third of ministers in the UK government, including top cabinet ministers, are linked to the UK finance and energy companies fuelling climate change, a report from LMN member group World Development Movement reveals.
The anti-poverty campaign group has condemned the ‘finance-energy complex’ at the heart of government, and is calling on the government to force UK banks and finance companies to publish the carbon emissions released by the fossil fuel projects they fund. Fossil fuel companies are worth £900 billion on the London Stock Exchange, and the top five UK banks underwrote £170 billion in bonds and share issues for fossil fuel companies between 2010 and 2012. Top cabinet ministers including William Hague, Vince Cable, George Osborne and Michael Gove have links with big finance, oil and coal companies that are driving climate change.
See http://www.wdm.org.uk/climate-change/one-third-uk-government-ministers-linked-uk-companies-fuelling-climate-change.
See infographic Fossil Fuel Web of Power at http://www.wdm.org.uk/nexus/index.html.
Read report at http://www.wdm.org.uk/sites/default/files/Carbon%20Capital%20Media%20Briefing5.pdf.
Take action: Make bankers come clean about their fossil fuel finance
The UK financial sector is bankrolling climate change by ploughing billions into the dirty projects of fossil fuel companies.
Banks, pension funds and other shady financiers must be forced to come clean about how much damage the dirty and destructive energy projects they are financing around the world are doing to our climate.
New regulation coming into force later this year will mean the UK’s biggest businesses will have to report on their carbon emissions. But the financial sector has been let off the hook from disclosing the climate impacts of their investments.
See http://www.wdm.org.uk/action/carbon-capital-vince-cable-action.