Citigroup, Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan Chase, Morgan Stanley, Bank of America and Wells Fargo. The average American has probably heard of these banking giants.
It’s less likely they’ve heard of the United Nations Net Zero Banking Alliance, or why it’s troubling that the aforementioned banks are all members.
So troubling, that in January, agriculture commissioners from 12 states wrote an inquiry letter to these financial institutions, demanding answers about their involvement.
Specifically, the commissioners addressed the dangers of American banks joining the Net Zero Banking Alliance and what it would mean for farmers.
“Implementing these [NZBA] commitments would have severe consequences for American farmers — including cutting America’s beef and livestock consumption in half, switching to inefficient electric farm equipment, and moving away from the nitrogen fertilizer necessary for American agriculture to thrive.
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“We are deeply troubled that your banks have given the UN Environment Programme (“UNEP”) authority to ‘review’ and ‘monitor’ your banks’ climate targets for ‘consistency’ with UN criteria, especially given the UNEP’s leading role in inciting Sri Lanka to adopt its disastrous fertilizer ban.”
The commissioners gave the banks until Feb. 16 to respond to the inquiry.
One of the signers, Florida Commissioner Wilton Simpson, issued a statement on Feb. 16 that JPMorgan Chase had left the alliance, along with BlackRock, which holds significant shares of Bank of America, Wells Fargo and Citigroup in addition to JPMorgan Chase.
“I was proud to stand with 11 other state agriculture commissioners demanding accountability from America’s largest banks over their commitments to left-wing, anti-agriculture, ESG-driven, and anti-consumer climate policies from the United Nations Net-Zero Banking Alliance,” Simpson said in the statement.
“If these banks had their way, they would unilaterally force America’s farmers and ranchers — through the threat of withholding capital and financing — to adopt ‘green’ infrastructure, technology, and equipment.
“We will not stand idly by and allow unelected individuals and woke institutions to make unchecked decisions that would intentionally cripple American agriculture and threaten our food security and national security.”
Despite Simpson’s announcement that the banks or their large shareholders had pulled out of the alliance, all six banks are still listed as members of the NZBA on its website.
The Western Journal reached out to the six banks regarding their response to the commissioners’ inquiry. Three banks haven’t responded, Goldman Sachs and Wells Fargo declined to comment, and JPMorgan Chase spokeswoman Lauren Bianchi said the bank indeed responded to the letter, denying the association with NZBA would harm American agriculture.
“We believe the agriculture sector is one of our country’s great strengths and are proud of our work across the U.S. economy and around the globe to support America’s agricultural value chain,” the email statement to The Western Journal read.
“We provide billions of dollars in credit and capital to hundreds of clients across the sector — including local farms, agribusiness, and manufacturing facilities. Our membership in the NZBA, or any similar initiative, does not compromise our independent business judgment or mean abandoning the industries that support the agricultural value chain. Our Firm makes independent decisions and does not cede control to third parties.”
The Western Journal also reached out to 9 of the 12 agricultural commissioners.
At the time of this publication, only Jody Reinke, assistant to Commissioner Doug Goehring of North Dakota, had responded.
“Commissioner Goehring has not received any correspondence on Net Zero Banking Alliance,” Reinke wrote in an email statement.
The six banks have been in hot water before for their U.N. affiliations.
In 2022, Republican attorneys general from more than a dozen states sent civil investigative demands, inquiring about the banks’ ties to the NZBA, Reuters reported.
The focus of that probe was on the banks’ avoidance of investing in the energy sector, rather than its impact on agricultural practices.
“The last thing Americans need right now are corporate activists helping the left bankrupt our fossil fuel industry,” Texas AG Ken Paxton said at the time, according to Reuters.
But what’s the big deal about some big banks joining a U.N. club, anyway?
There are many answers to that question, the most important of which is that it’s a problem for farmers. And if it’s a problem for farmers, it’s a problem for Americans — at least the ones who need to eat.
The NZBA has its own agenda. Any bank that joins must obviously follow that agenda if it wants to remain a member. Consequently, farmers would need to follow the banks’ rules if they want to keep their financing to remain in business and contribute to America’s food supply.
The obvious danger here is that the banks could leverage their lending powers to force farmers to submit to crippling ESG policies.
What’s ESG?
ESG stands for “environmental, social and governance.” If you Googled it, you’d probably get results from ESG algorithm-friendly web pages, like Investopedia, which says, “ESG investing refers to how companies score on … [environmental, social and governance] responsibility metrics and standards for potential investments.
“Environmental criteria gauge how a company safeguards the environment. Social criteria examine how it manages relationships with employees, suppliers, customers, and communities. Governance measures a company’s leadership, executive pay, audits, internal controls, and shareholder rights.”
That doesn’t sound so bad. Aside from the fact that it’s a social credit score for companies, who could argue against any of those criteria as legitimate concerns for potential investors in a company?
The issue is that this definition is like describing Adolf Hitler simply as a man with a funny mustache. It may be true, but it’s far from the whole picture.
Heritage Action for America, a conservative policy advocacy group, described the ESG scoring system a bit differently on its website “ESG Hurts.”
“ESG is a political tool used by progressives to advance Leftist ideology in businesses and financial institutions,” the website read. “From requiring NASDAQ-listed companies to appoint board members based on race and sex, to requiring greenhouse gas emissions to be reported, ESG is destroying our free market and threatens both American interests and our cultural fabric of freedom, choice and liberty.
“ESG policies are a thinly veiled attempt to radically transform corporations into social justice warriors. Pro-ESG businesses support the Left’s ‘woke’ culture war to redefine gender, promote critical race theory, and cancel conservatives.”
Hypothetically, this means if the UN and their Net Zero-compliant banking partners determine that, for instance, growing wheat is bad for the climate or perhaps if these wheat farmers don’t support the right causes, banks could instantly cut them off (de-banking them) or severely restrict their financing (loans, rotating lines of credit, etc). This would either force these farms into compliance or out of business.
That strong-arming, based on a CCP-like social credit scoring system, could severely influence who ultimately owns and runs America’s farms, which in turn, would impact the nation’s food supply.
The Race to “Net Zero”
The Net Zero Banking Alliance was founded in April 2021. It’s an alliance of 144 banks, whose total assets amount to $74 trillion USD, or 41 percent of “global banking assets,” according to its website.
Its very name reveals its alignment with the World Economic Forum, another globalist power platform, and its Net Zero plan.
What is Net Zero?
In the WEF’s own words, “Net zero means collectively cutting net CO2 emissions by 50% by 2030 and getting to zero by 2050.”
The NZBA is an initiative of the UN Environment Programme, which calls itself “the leading global authority on the environment.”
Founded in 1972, UNEP has since dipped its fingers in a lot of pies.
“UNEP works closely with its 193 Member States and representatives from civil society, businesses, and other major groups and stakeholders to address environmental challenges through the UN Environment Assembly, the world’s highest-level decision-making body on the environment,” its website read.
One theme of the globalists’ Net Zero plan is urgency.
The world saw a glimpse of this urgency in action when the Net Zero plan was deployed in Sri Lanka, which the agriculture commissioners noted in their letter.
Sri Lanka: A Warning to the U.S.
In 2019, Sri Lanka, backed by UNEP, led the Colombo Declaration, an ambition to cut “nitrogen waste” in half by 2030.
“Humanity’s very existence depends on nitrogen,” deputy executive director Joyce Msuya admitted in a UNEP article about the declaration. “Over time, we have learned how to harness its power. Pulling nitrogen from the air and fixing it in soil is one reason why the human population has expanded so rapidly.”
And yet, claiming that “our failure to use nitrogen efficiently is polluting the land, air and water,” the program pushed for drastic restrictions on the critical fertilizer component.
Its first endeavor ended in disaster.
In April 2021, chemical fertilizers were banned in Sri Lanka. The abrupt change left farmers without adequate preparation and training. Meanwhile, organic fertilizer was scarce and even unavailable, according to Relief Web. Although the ban was lifted in November that same year, the impact on production was catastrophic, and the season suffered an estimated 40 to 50 percent reduction in production.
“Economic data paints a picture of starkly diminished lives,” The New York Times wrote about Sri Lanka in January 2023. “Inflation, which peaked around 90 percent during the worst of the crisis, remains a punishingly high 59 percent. For two in five households, food purchases eat up at least 75 percent of expenditures. Nearly 30 percent of the population is experiencing food insecurity, according to the United Nations.”
Agriculture is one of the main pillars of a nation’s prosperity, as Thomas Jefferson said.
Whether that nation is a tiny island or a continental mass, the demise of its agriculture could bring the country to its knees.
Agriculture may not be the most fascinating subject to most, or one that will grab the headlines — it seldom does. But that’s partly what makes this particular threat so worrisome. Despite the implicit dangers of global influencers financially controlling America’s farmers, and our food supply, few people know about the threat, and fewer seem to care.
That may change if a U.N.-generated food shortage hits the country, but by then it will be too late.
