Extinction Rebellion (XR) used shocking photos to puncture the pretensions of climate crisis funders JP Morgan’s Greenwash campaign. On September 10, 2024, XR arranged a hard-hitting visit to the Sustainability Department of one of the biggest funders of climate breakdown, which they called the ‘most staggeringly pointless and hypocritical place in the UK’.
Global investment bank JP Morgan has funnelled a horrifying US$434bn into the fossil fuel industry since governments pledged to tackle the accelerating climate and ecological crisis with the Paris Agreement in 2015.
XR activists from Bournemouth, Dorset, Southampton and London organised an exhibition of photographs by world renowned climate photographer Gideon Mendel, outside the Sustainability Department of JP Morgan, located at their office in Bournemouth, Dorset.
The exhibition included images of children from Devon holding signs asking if their favourite places would be underwater when they are 40. Alongside these were photographs showing real climate damage of flooding and fire from the UK and around the world.
XR spokesperson Paul Stephens said:
“People don’t realise that there were 3000 excess deaths in the UK during that heatwave in 2022, meanwhile JP Morgan continues to finance the destruction of the natural world that our lives, and the lives of our children, depend upon.
“We want to show that the decisions that people make from the comfort of their plush offices at JP Morgan, have massive consequences everywhere, now and for centuries to come. At a time when we need to drastically cut greenhouse gas emissions, JP Morgan are criminally bankrolling ever greater emissions. This is clearly wrong and should have legal consequences. It must be challenged.
“We hope that our photo exhibition will stir the consciences of at least a few of their executives and make them question the morality of funding a climate crisis that scientists say is on course to cause the literal end of the world as we know it.”
Similar actions took place outside JP Morgan’s Canary Wharf and Embankment offices in June this year to coincide with the trial of six health-workers for cracking windows at Canary Wharf on the hottest day the UK has ever recorded. After hearing evidence of climate risk, the jury was unable to convict them.
