Changing Banks

Want your money to go to financing green energy, climate resilience, and improvements in infrastructure? Of course you do. At a minimum, you don’t want to be financing the oil and gas industry. If you’ve got your checking account with a large bank, chances are that your money is going somewhere you don’t want it to go.

Since Trump became president, several large American Banks have exited the Net Zero Banking Alliance, including JPM, Wells Fargo, Bank of America, Goldman Sachs, Citigroup, and Morgan Stanley. Whether this marks a permanent change in direction or just an attempt to placate Trump, who has pledged to expand US oil and gas production, remains to be seen. What I can say is that I’m enraged and disgusted by this act of cowardice and greed.

So, what can you do about it? You can change banks. You can find a list of the remaining members of Net Zero here. I decided to go with Climate First Bank, a Florida based bank that is a certified B-Corp, carbon neutral, and financier of renewable energy. Climate First Bank is growing rapidly because of people like us making the change and has grown to $545 million in assets in only two and a half years. They offer over 4% interest on checking accounts right now (vs zero interest I was getting from Wells Fargo, not the zero I was looking for.) 

Changing bank accounts is cumbersome and irritating, but I’m happy I did it. Also I should add, nobody is paying me to say this or write this blog.