With $435 billion in assets and over 23 million customers, Wells Fargo is the largest US-based bank still operating without comprehensive modern guidelines to govern its investment practices and corporate conduct on a broad range of urgent environmental and social issues. Case studies on DirtyMoney.org show how Wells Fargo supports radical extraction practices like clear-cutting forests and leveling mountaintops, often on public land for private profit, from Ecuador to Alaska to West Virginia.
Despite persistent calls from citizen action groups, Wells Fargo has refused to incorporate new industry best practices on the environment, instead substituting PR and greenwash for action. While the company released a 10-point environmental plan significantly weaker than the industry’s best and riddled with loopholes, it has shown its true colors by investing millions of dollars in Massey Energy, a company currently under fire for destroying Appalachian communities with mountaintop coal removal, and funding an industry front group that is trying to open up roadless areas in Alaska’s valuable Tongass National Forest.
Industry peers began to adopt environmental policies in 2003 to address the pressing issues of climate change, ecosystem preservation, and human rights violations. Citigroup, Bank of America, JPMorgan Chase, and Goldman Sachs have all become early adapters to a sustainable economics model being reflected in countries around the world. Policies include innovative approaches including a designation of no-go zones for the world’s most vulnerable ecosystems, carbon accounting and commitments to reductions in greenhouse gas emissions, and advocating for federal regulation on climate change.
Wells Fargo in Coal Country
Wells Fargo invests hundreds of millions of dollars in rogue coal companies engaged in the wholesale decimation of Appalachian communities and ecosystems through the reckless mining practice known as mountaintop removal. Instead of financing clean, sustainable energy sources for the 21st century, Wells Fargo is bankrolling 19th century operations that produce electricity in the most polluting, most destructive ways possible.
This includes playing a part in a $130 million loan deal to Massey Energy, a brutally anti-union mining giant engaged in mountain-top removal in West Virginia, Kentucky, and Virginia. Massey has been the target of community protests throughout the region as a result of its destructive practices, which includes placing a waste sludge dam and coal silo adjacent to Marsh Fork Elementary School. Surveys of children show alarmingly high rates of respiratory illness, most probably because of the substantial coal dust emitted from the structure.
Wells Fargo and Human Rights Abuses in Peru
Wells Fargo has backed Burlington Resources – recently acquired by ConocoPhillips – a Houston-based oil company with plans to explore for oil in three highly controversial oil concessions in remote Amazon regions of Ecuador and Peru. These concessions were carved out of the traditional territories of four indigenous nations ? the Shuar, Achuar,, Kichwa, and Zpara ? despite the strong community opposposition to oil development on their lands.
Wells Fargo Clearcutting Paradise – The Tongass
The Tongass is the largest tract of intact temperate rainforest in the world, with large areas of old-growth and undisturbed watersheds. It is North America’s last refuge for ancient coastal tree species, and provides habitat for rare and endangered species, such as brown bears, bald eagles, wolves, goshawks and all five Pacific salmon species.
Typically out of step with modern values, Wells Fargo financed a mill that increased demand for logging in the Tongass. Meanwhile, Wells Fargo has sponsored an industry front group that advocates logging in roadless areas in articles such as one titled "Tongass Endangered?" that flies in the face of science and national public opinion.
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