A “decisive moment for all our futures” has been met not with courage, but with a corporate retreat, according to one leading campaigner. The Net Zero Banking Alliance (NZBA) has shut down after the world’s leading bankers shrank from the challenge of defending their climate commitments against political opposition.
The call to seize this decisive moment came from Jeanne Martin of ShareAction, who urged senior bankers to show leadership. The challenge emerged in the form of an “anti-woke” political movement in the United States, which gained significant power after Donald Trump’s re-election.
However, the industry’s response was not to rise to the occasion. Instead, the six largest US financial institutions, from JPMorgan Chase to Goldman Sachs, all chose to shrink from the challenge. They quit the NZBA in a move that was widely seen as an attempt to avoid a political fight.
This failure to act decisively had a global impact. The American banks’ withdrawal created a leadership vacuum that no one else was willing to fill. Other international banks, including HSBC and Barclays, also chose to step back, leading to the alliance’s complete collapse.
The decisive moment, it seems, has passed without the decisive action many had hoped for from the corporate world. The focus now shifts to others who may be more willing to act. Activists argue that since the industry’s leaders have shrunk from the challenge, the responsibility now falls entirely on policymakers and regulators to make the decisive moves required to address the climate crisis.