By Elana Sulakshana Tamara Toles O’Laughlin . Rolling Stone, April 20, 2020.
A coalition of climate justice organizations is targeting Liberty Mutual for underwriting fossil fuels.
Climate and social justice advocates have long worked to connect the dots between flows of big money and the main players propping up the fossil fuel economy. As the climate movement pulls at the threads of old power structures, it’s found that the villains of the climate crisis are a wider network than you might imagine. Surprisingly, one of the biggest culprits guilty of accelerating the climate crisis is an often overlooked part of our daily lives: Big Insurance.
…
Big Oil, Big Money, and Big Insurance form an unholy alliance that prop up the fossil fuel economy. For too long, insurance companies have hidden behind charismatic cartoon logos and funny campaigns to escape the scrutiny they deserve for acting as central players in facilitating fossil fuel expansion. We call bullshit. And we aren’t the only ones. A rapidly growing international movement is rising to hold insurance companies accountable, and in the U.S. our first clear target is Liberty Mutual.
…
Stop the Money Pipeline coalition, an unprecedented partnership uniting nearly 100 local and national youth, Indigenous, environmental, and climate justice organizations, has identified three primary financial sector actors as top priority targets: megabank JPMorgan Chase (the Doomsday Bank, as Bill McKibben called it in Rolling Stone), behemoth asset manager Blackrock, and Liberty Mutual. Nearly 100,000 people have signed onto a petition calling on Liberty Mutual to stop taking part in enabling support for the tar sands industry.
Image caption/credit: Activists from the Stop the Money Pipeline Coalition in Manhattan in February. The coalition is targeting insurance giant Liberty Mutual for its investment in fossil fuel infrastructure like the Keystone XL pipeline. Erik McGregor/LightRocket/Getty Images.