Sunday, November 4, 2012

HSBC makes almost £100million from ‘bankrolling’ rainforest destruction

Global banking giant HSBC has raked in nearly £100m by bankrolling Malaysian logging companies who cause widespread rainforest destruction and abuse human rights....... ( Read More )

And - American authorities on Tuesday cited “astonishing” dysfunctional the British bank HSBC and said that it had helped Mexican drug traffickers, Iran, Libya and others under U.S. suspicion or sanction to move money around the world. 
HSBC agreed to pay $1.9 billion, the largest penalty ever imposed on a bank (Read More). 


Should we take issues with banks making loans to companies and individuals for projects we don't agree with? If legality is not the question then how they choose to risk their money should not be our concern. The problem here is that we have to ask if banks and companies is general should consider corporate responsibility when making policies? Walmart chooses to dictate to their suppliers "green credentials". Google chooses to mitigate Co2 emissions of their servers.


Hurricane Sandy just left a trail of destruction and death across the Carribean and the United States. We are being hit with one in a 100 year storms and weather with increasing regularity. As Michael Moore says "this is the new normal. How many times must we be socked in the head before we come to the realisation that maybe we may have something to do with this situation?".



Prior to the industrial age co2 level was 275 ppm it is now approaching 400 ppm. Should we be worried? Should we care? Co2 level is estimated to be 1800 ppm in the Jurassic period. We have condensed this time frame from millions of years to just a few hundred or even less. 

Yes we should take corporations to task for their policies. Our future is at stake.

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