Timestamps:
00:00 – 00:36 – Intro
00:37 – 01:20 – How to use your personal finances to drive climate action
01:21 – 04:08 – Moving your pension can be 21 times more effective at lowering your carbon footprint than stopping flying.
04:09 – 05:08 – Lloyds bank new climate policy
05:09 – 05:16 – Outro
Show Notes
Annika Deborah – Leader of Money Movers
Money Movers – Money Mover’s purpose is to create climate action, through empowering women to move our money in line with our values. We believe that with the power of peer-support, we can learn how to put our money to good use in the climate crisis – by moving bank accounts or pension providers, by making investments in green businesses or spending more money locally.
International Energy Agency (IPCC) – The International Energy Agency works with countries around the world to shape energy policies for a secure and sustainable future.
Lloyds Bank new climate policy: Britain’s largest domestic bank Lloyds Bank will no longer provide direct financing to fossil fuel projects as part of its new climate policy.
Transcript
Intro
Maryam Pasha 0:01
Welcome to climate quickies, bite sized nuggets of climate goodness from our TEDx London experts in under five minutes.
Ben Hurst 0:07
In this week’s climate quickie we hear from Anneka Deva the lead of money movers a movement to empower women to take climate action, removing their personal finances, aiming to move 1 billion by 2030. She shares how you can use your personal finances to drive climate action. If you have a bank account, a pension, or even savings, this is the Quickie for you. Let’s head over to Anneka to hear more. Stay curious.
How to use your personal finances to drive climate action
Anneka Deva 0:37
Yeah, so for many of us, we have bank accounts, we have pensions, some of us might even have savings. But when we when we’re brought up with the idea of saving and money, I think a lot of us still think that, you know, when we have a bank account, it’s like putting money between the underneath the mattress and all the time these financial institutions are doing things with our money. And if we knew what we were doing with it, a lot of us wouldn’t agree a lot of us would not be happy that our money was being used to fund the arms trade or deforestation or fossil fuels. And it never occurs to us that our money is doing this work on our behalf every single day.
Moving your pension can be 21 times more effective at lowering your carbon footprint than stopping flying.
There are really huge international institutions. This scientist, the IPCC, the International Energy Agency, who have said we need to stop funding fossil fuel expansion, we just need to stop it, we stop we need to stop it. Now if we were in any hope of reaching some of the goals, planetary goals. So we know that’s true. And yet, in the last six years since the there was a thing called the Paris Agreement, which is where lots of countries came together and said yes, this is important and serious, and we need to do things. Since the Paris Agreement was signed in 2016. Banks, mainstream banks have invested $4.6 trillion globally into fossil fuel expansion. And that’s the 60 biggest banks around the world, many of which you will have heard the names of, if you look at now just the UK, UK pensions invest 330 million pounds into fossil fuel expansion. And so to put it in perspective, that’s higher than the UK is entire carbon footprint. That’s just from our pensions in the UK. So there are some institutions out there who are investing in really good things like renewable energy, you know, things that are climate solutions. And so that’s the other thing here that we need to stop funding the bad stuff and start funding the good stuff. And so your money is being invested all the time. And that’s, again, another exciting thing is that when you look at the impact the carbon footprint of your pension, moving your pension can be 21 times more effective at lowering your carbon footprint than stopping from flying, going vegetarian, and changing your energy supplier combined.
Maryam Pasha 3:09
Say it again.
Anneka Deva 3:10
So moving your pension to a more sustainable pension can be 21 times more effective at lowering your carbon footprint, and going vegetarian stopping flying and changing energy supplier combined. And there are loads of places to start. So you might not have a pension or you might not feel able to move that for whatever reason. But you’ve got a bank, most of us have bank accounts. And so again, that’s a simple switch we can make that again removes that social licence from banks who are still thinking they can get away with funding fossil fuel expansion. This is the exciting thing that these massive financial institutions who we often don’t really, we feel like aren’t listening to us, they are starting to sit up and listen and recognise that this is really mainstream.
Lloyds bank new climate policy
And so just recently, Lloyd’s, one of the main high street banks in the UK, have publicly announced they were going to stop directly investing in fossil fuels. And that’s huge for high street bank to say we’re gonna stop doing that. And no doubt that social pressure banks are starting to realise, hey, we’ve got to do something. And same with other types of financial institutions. People worry that sustainable investing is is less lucrative. But when you look at what long term finances are, when you look at pensions, which you know, for so many people, that’s something that you won’t be seeing the fruits of until decades and decades later, actually, when it comes to that fossil fuels are absolutely dead, but when it comes to investing, you’re really looking at the long term. And you know, things that are good for the planet are good for us in every way.
Outro
Ben Hurst 5:09
Thanks for listening to this quickie.
Maryam Pasha 5:11
This episode was created by our superstar podcast team at TEDx London. Until next time,
Ben Hurst 5:16
stay curious.
