The Global Net Zero Financial Cartel, Falling Apart

Less than three weeks ago, on December 23, in a post on optimism about the potential demise of the green energy fantasy, I took note that two of the largest U.S. banks had just quit something called the “Net Zero Banking Alliance.” The two were Goldman Sachs and Wells Fargo. These two banks, along with many others, including all of the biggest ones, had joined the NZBA as it was getting organized under auspices of the UN back in 2021. NZBA, together with other related groups organized around the same time, aspired to be cartels of financial institutions that would save the planet by starving hydrocarbon fuels of all investment capital, while re-directing the money to the “green” energy transition. Now, shortly after the re-election of Donald Trump, two of the biggest banking giants had decided to exit. Could this be a sign that the zero-carbon green energy fantasy was losing its grip?

In the short 19 days since that post, the trickle of resignations from the NZBA and related groups has turned into an avalanche. In the blink of an eye, what once seemed a serious threat that hydrocarbon fuels could be snuffed out by a group boycott of investors has almost entirely gone away.

More on the latest developments later in this post. But first, some history of NZBA and the related alphabet soup of do-gooders.

2021 was the year that the UN’s big climate confab, known as the “Conference of Parties” or “COP,” was to be held in Glasgow, Scotland. Although the COPs are normally held every year, there had not been one in 2020 due to the Covid pandemic. After the year hiatus, COP-26 was ultimately held from October 31 to November 13, 2021. Boris Johnson, Prime Minister of the UK, who had converted from one-time climate skeptic to all-in alarmist, was determined to make this COP-26 the be-all and end-all of all COPs. The swarms of little aspiring tyrants in UN bureaucracies, just off their hugely successful Covid power grabs, were ready to flex their new muscles in the climate arena.

In the many months of preparations for the Glasgow conference, the UN got the bright idea of organizing all of the world’s big financial institutions into cartels to direct their capital to an “energy transition” and away from hydrocarbon fuels. To achieve this goal, in April 2021 there was formed an entity called the Glasgow Financial Alliance for Net Zero, or GFANZ. According to its website:

The Glasgow Financial Alliance for Net Zero (GFANZ) brings together leading financial institutions and other financial services sector participants who have individually decided to support the objectives of mobilizing capital and addressing the barriers companies face to scaling decarbonization. . . . GFANZ was founded to establish a forum for addressing and catalysing action toward the sector-wide challenges and opportunities associated with the net-zero transition.

The moving force behind this initiative appears to have been a guy named Mark Carney. Have you heard of him? Here is a picture of him from the GFANZ website:

Carney is a native Canadian, and a big-time guru in the central banking world: he was the Governor of the Bank of Canada from 2008 to 2013, and then promptly moved to become the Governor of the Bank of England from 2013 to 2020 (the first non-Brit to hold that position). Along the way, Carney became one of the top evangelists of the climate alarm religion. Upon leaving the Bank of England, he hopped over to the UN, where he got the highfalutin title of “Special Envoy on Climate Action and Finance.” According to its website, “GFANZ was launched in April 2021 by UN Special Envoy on Climate Action and Finance Mark Carney and the COP26 presidency to accelerate the transition to a net-zero global economy.”

Carney became the Chair of GFANZ. By the time of COP-26 in November 2021, Carney had also recruited to join him as Co-Chair none other than the ultimate climate hypocrite, Mike Bloomberg (of the seven houses and eight private aircraft). According to the GFANZ website, the two remain Co-Chairs today.

GFANZ was then instrumental in organizing a series of subsidiary groups divided by industry sector. Relevant to today’s post are the NZBA (formed contemporaneously with GFANZ in April 2021), and the Net Zero Asset Managers Initiative, NZAMI, which actually had been launched a little earlier in December 2020.

Both the NZBA and the NZAMI were rapidly successful in recruiting to their membership essentially all the biggest names in their industry sectors. The missions statements of the groups are written in a bureaucratic style that makes them difficult to understand, but it is clear at least that the idea is to stop the financing of the hydrocarbon fuel industry. For example, here is the first item of the “Commitment Statement” of the NZAB:

Transition the operational and attributable greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from their lending and investment portfolios to align with pathways to net-zero by 2050 or sooner.

Which brings me to the latest developments: The exits from the NZAB of Goldman Sachs and Wells Fargo in early December quickly opened the barn doors for the other big players to rush out. On December 31, Reuters reported that Citibank and Bank of America had just quit the NZAB. Morgan Stanley announced its exit on January 2. JP Morgan quit on January 7. These six big banks among them have a market share of more than 25% of the entire U.S. banking industry.

And then, just yesterday, the largest asset manager in the country, BlackRock, quit the NZAMI. Of the three largest asset managers, another one, Vanguard, had already quit back in 2022. That leaves only State Street remaining, of the big three.

Meanwhile, in case you are wondering what is going on with Mark Carney, he appears to be a leading candidate for leader of Canada’s Liberal Party now that Justin Trudeau has quit. The CBC, in a piece yesterday, says that Carney has the backing of some 30 Liberal MPs. That would mean that Carney could become the next Prime Minister of Canada, should the Liberals win the election expected to be held some time this year. On the other hand, according to the latest polls, it looks like the Liberals are headed toward one of the most decisive wipe-outs in the history of Canada. This poll, from CBC News on January 6, concludes that if the election were held that day, the Conservatives would win approximately 227 seats to the Liberals’ 44 (in a Parliament of 338).

So Carney may get a chance to test how well the climate alarm message continues to sell to the Canadian voter. So far, it’s not looking good.