Ending ‘reconciliation’: RBC greenwashing and the global climate crises

Global climate emergency — here and now

The past 400 years within colonial capitalist systems have seen accelerated destruction of our planet, driving us into a sixth mass extinction. Extracting earth’s “resources” is leading to rapid decay of our only home. This corruption (the sort that led to enslaving human beings) is maintained to this day by violent and genocidal systems of oppression in every crevice of society, at the global level.

Colonial capitalism requires poverty to exist and remains in place using tools of division including ageism, ableism, racism, misogyny, homophobia, transphobia, classism, and religious intolerance. The result: Indigenous land and water defenders around the globe are telling us that soon there will be no more cows in the fields, fruit on the branches, or clean water to drink.

The 2022 report of the traditionally conservative Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) indicates that global Greenhouse Gas (GHG) emissions need to peak in 2025 or runaway global heating will be unavoidable. Yet, Canada’s emissions are continuing to increase and represent a major failure compared to other G7 nations.

RBC and the fossil fuel crisis

The Royal Bank of Canada (RBC) leads Canada’s banks in funding fossil fuel development and is the fifth worst offender in the world. RBC is financing “carbon bombs set to trigger catastrophic climate breakdown,” “the world’s largest proposed crude oil pipeline,” the Trans Mountain Tar Sands Expansion Project,  and the Coastal GasLink fracked gas pipeline, to name a few. Including RBC’s latest financing, the bank has loaned or invested over $270 billion to coal, oil and gas companies since late 2015.

RBC is the top bank in Canada funding oil and gas expansion and the tar sands, pumping $9.6 billion and $6.8 billion, respectively, into those sectors. The Net-Zero Banking Alliance (NZBA) and the Glasgow Financial Alliance for Net-Zero are designed to steer investments to a “climate-safe” future. Since joining these banking alliances in October 2021, RBC has pumped billions of dollars into fossil fuel expansion and provided $12.6 billion to coal, oil and gas companies.

Last year’s International Energy Agency’s annual report analyzing global energy trends, said there is no room for new fossil fuel infrastructure if the world is to meet the Paris Agreement’s goal of maintaining livable conditions.

Greenwashing & merger

RBC, Canada’s largest bank and top fossil fuel financier, plans to buy the Canadian arm of one of Europe’s top fossil-fuel-financing banks, HSBC. This would combine two banks reckoning with greenwashing.

While RBC claims: “RBC and HSBC Canada share a focus on sustainability. RBC has committed to providing $500 billion in sustainable finance by 2025.” RBC’s commitments are little more than greenwash. Both banks have been or are under investigation for publicly promoting climate commitments while continuing to finance climate catastrophe. In stark contrast to its promises, RBC remains the largest Canadian bank financier of fossil fuels. In the 12 months after joining the NZBA, RBC provided $9.2 billion to companies with fossil fuel expansion plans.

Competition Bureau Canada’s investigation of RBC accuses RBC of lacking a “credible” plan for how it will slash GHG emissions. RBC’s financing of fossil fuel expansion is wholly incompatible with its climate goals. In fact, at least some of RBC’s “sustainable finance” goes to fossil fuel companies.

Similarly, in October 2022, the UK Advertising Standards Authority found HSBC misleading consumers by omitting information about their financing of fossil fuel and other high emitting industries. The bank was ordered to remove advertising focused on helping clients transition to net-zero. According to the annual Banking on Climate Chaos report, RBC and HSBC have supported fossil fuels with $278 billion and $180 billion, respectively, since the Paris Agreement.

On its website, HSBC Canada repeats its misleading claims that HSBC has “committed between $750 billion and $1 trillion in sustainable finance and investment globally to support the transition to a net-zero economy,” while omitting that HSBC Holdings was the largest financier of upstream fossil fuel expansion of all European banks between 2016- 2021. HSBC Canada has no plans to end investment in fossil fuel expansion, despite the need for a credible climate commitment.

Merged into an even wealthier and more powerful entity, the planned acquisition of two banks facing serious accusations of undermining climate action will eliminate competition and possibilities of habitable futures. In the words of UN Secretary General, António Guterres, “Using bogus ‘net-zero’ pledges to cover up massive fossil fuel expansion is reprehensible. It is rank deception.”

Illegal pipelines on stolen land

The story of RBC’s marriage to fossil fuels brings us to a tale as old as time: Illegal and violent colonial capitalist construction on stolen Indigenous lands.

In this particular case, RBC is financing TC Energy’s Coastal GasLink (CGL), an illegal pipeline being forced through unceded Wet’suwet’en territories and jurisdiction, as decided by the Supreme Court of Canada. After years of Wet’suwet’en resistance, drilling under the pristine and sacred, salmon-spawning, drinkable waters of Wedzin Kwa (colonially termed Morice River, BC) began last September.

Much like the construction of the Trans Mountain pipeline, “free, prior, and informed consent” was not obtained for CGL, despite federal and provincial laws that “ensure” requirements of the United Nations’ Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP) are met.

The construction of the CGL pipeline is a threat to the Wet’suwet’en Nation’s food sovereignty and cultural traditions, sacred entities, critical habitat for endangered wildlife, clean water, and pristine lands inhabited and defended by centuries of generations of Wet’suwet’en.

Indigenous peoples are not mentioned in RBC’s 2030 climate targets despite last year’s shareholder resolutions to respect UNDRIP. Land back movements and returning to Indigenous customs (of connection and giving back what is taken) are critical to leaving livable conditions for the next seven generations of all creatures on earth.

On Apr. 1, Decolonial Solidarity Moncton, together with the national team, ally groups and justice, religious, and environmental organizations, will be rallying for a nationwide day of action, in solidarity with Wet’suwet’en, to protest RBC’s transgressions.

Rallies will take place days prior to RBC’s 2023 AGM scheduled for Apr. 5, in Saskatoon. Wet’suwet’en Hereditary Chiefs are scheduled to show up for the Saskatoon AGM.

No ‘net zero’ for RBC

Much like the RCMP are not going to fix internal issues of misogyny and racism from within using the same mandates they have had since inception, industries most responsible for causing global heating, namely fossil fuel firms and the banks that finance them, are not looking to solve our climate emergency. Instead, they have gone from decades of climate denial to greenwashing/wokewashing.

Part of this wokewashing includes climate strategies that are no more than a PR exercise. It turns out that “net-zero” itself is a term that enables corporations to try to cheat the laws of physics.

For humanity to have any chance of halting lethal global heating, it is imperative we do away with the language of “net zero emissions” in favour of “absolute or near zero emissions.” Current warming trends are likely to stop once CO2 emissions reach zero. Temperatures will likely remain steady for a time after we reach zero emissions.

The RBC-financed, $6.6-billion Coastal Gaslink pipeline, named the largest private-sector investment in Canadian history by the Trudeau government, is proposed to transport methane-releasing fracked gas from the north coast of BC. The $40 billion plant in Kitimat, powered by CO₂-emitting fracked gas (contrary to the original “hydro-electric facilities” promised), will export fracked gas to Asia.

The UN has made it abundantly clear that investing in new fossil fuel infrastructure at this time is “moral and economic madness.” This statement is in conjunction with available scientific literature, the latest IPCC reports, recent health findings, African scholars, and Indigenous Chiefs around the globe.

Heather Angka is a launcher of Moncton’s Decolonial Solidarity Affinity Group, an active member of Climate Justice Coalition and Grassroots NB, and a climate justice activist formerly known as “Scientist.”

Doug Swain has been an organizer and volunteer with Extinction Rebellion NB and other groups over the past five years. He holds a PhD in Ecology from the University of British Columbia, and recently retired after 30 years as a research scientist with the Canadian Department of Fisheries and Oceans at the Gulf Fisheries Centre in Moncton.