• About
    • Which Energy Mix is this?
  • Climate News Network Archive
  • Contact
The climate news that makes a difference.
No Result
View All Result
The Energy Mix
  • Canada
  • UK & Europe
  • Fossil Fuels
  • Ending Emissions
  • Community Climate Finance
  • Clean Electricity Grid
  • Cities & Communities
SUBSCRIBE
DONATE
  • Canada
  • UK & Europe
  • Fossil Fuels
  • Ending Emissions
  • Community Climate Finance
  • Clean Electricity Grid
  • Cities & Communities
SUBSCRIBE
DONATE
No Result
View All Result
The Energy Mix
No Result
View All Result
  • Canada
  • UK & Europe
  • Fossil Fuels
  • Ending Emissions
  • Community Climate Finance
  • Clean Electricity Grid
  • Cities & Communities
  FEATURED
Danske Bank Quits New Fossil Fuel Financing January 23, 2023
Extreme Warming Ahead Even as Worst-Case Scenarios Grow ‘Obsolete’ January 23, 2023
Notley Scorches Federal Just Transition Bill as Fossil CEO Calls for Oilsands Boom January 23, 2023
IRON OXIDE: New Battery Brings Long-Duration Storage to Grids, 750 Jobs to West Virginia January 23, 2023
BREAKING: GFANZ Banks, Investors Pour Hundreds of Billions into Fossil Fuels January 17, 2023
Next
Prev

Wet’suwet’en, Hollywood Team Up to Demand RBC Divest from Coastal GasLink Pipeline

May 1, 2022
Reading time: 3 minutes

Henrickson/Wikimedia Commons

Henrickson/Wikimedia Commons

2
SHARES
 

Divest from the Coastal GasLink pipeline or Hollywood will divest from you was the message for the Royal Bank of Canada, delivered last week by Office of the Wet’suwet’en spokesperson Sleydo’ Molly Wickham and climate activist and actor Mark Ruffalo.

Five months after the RCMP stormed a Wet’suwet’en protest camp established to protect the community’s ancestral lands, waters, and rights, Ruffalo and Sleydo’ have taken to the pages of Rolling Stone, urging RBC to stop bankrolling the 670-kilometre pipeline through the heart of Wet’suwet’en territory.

  • Be among the first to read The Energy Mix Weekender
  • A brand new weekly digest containing exclusive and essential climate stories from around the world.
  • The Weekender:The climate news you need.
New!
Subscribe

The co-authored commentary comes a few weeks after Ruffalo, together with activist actors Scarlett Johansson, Robert Downey Jr., and Taika Waititi, wrote to RBC urging it to dump the project. The Hollywood heavyweights warned that if that divestment does not take place, RBC “won’t just be known for providing financial services to Hollywood, it will be known for steamrolling Indigenous rights.”

RBC is the parent company of Hollywood’s top banking heavy: City National Bank (CNB).

Sleydo’ and Ruffalo said RBC has provided Coastal GasLink with “$275 million in project finance, a co-financed $6.5-billion loan, a $40-million corporate loan, and $200 million in co-financed working capital, while serving as financial adviser for the fracked gas pipeline.”

The Canadian bank has faced an onslaught of criticism for its support of the pipeline, including repeated condemnation from the United Nations Committee for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination. 

Central to the argument is that Wet’suwet’en hereditary chiefs were not consulted at all on the project until very recently, despite RBC’s claims to the contrary. That elected leaders were a part of the discussion hardly makes up for this failure, Sleydo’ and Ruffalo explained, as elected band councils only have authority over reserve lands that make up 0.2% of Canada’s land mass, whereas hereditary leaders are responsible for all of Wet’suwet’en territory.

TC Energy, Coastal GasLink’s parent company, “didn’t ask hereditary chiefs because the company knew the answer would be ‘no’,” they added.

Behaving as if hereditary chiefs do not exist “is a prime example of erasure of First Nations people,” Sleydo’ and Ruffalo wrote, but “it’s never too late to do the right thing.” They called on RBC to “immediately divest from Coastal GasLink,” because otherwise, “Hollywood and many others will just divest from them.”

In its reply to Wickham and Ruffalo, RBC stated only that the project “has agreements with all 20 elected First Nations councils along the pipeline route, and 16 councils have signed an equity option agreement to take an ownership position in the project.” The bank alluded to Indigenous dissent only in passing: “We respect there are differing opinions within Indigenous communities, and as we’ve sought input from many members, they’ve told us that these differences are best resolved within their own communities.”



in Canada, Climate Action / "Blockadia", Finance & Investment, First Peoples, Media, Messaging, & Public Opinion, Pipelines / Rail Transport, United States

The latest climate news and analysis, direct to your inbox

Subscribe

Related Posts

RL0919/wikimedia commons
Finance & Investment

Danske Bank Quits New Fossil Fuel Financing

January 23, 2023
2.1k
Rachel Notley/Facebook
Jobs & Training

Notley Scorches Federal Just Transition Bill as Fossil CEO Calls for Oilsands Boom

January 23, 2023
257
EcoAnalytics
Media, Messaging, & Public Opinion

Albertans Want a Just Transition, Despite Premier’s Grumbling

January 23, 2023
188

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

I agree to the Terms & Conditions and Privacy Policy.

Trending Stories

RL0919/wikimedia commons

Danske Bank Quits New Fossil Fuel Financing

January 23, 2023
2.1k
@tongbingxue/Twitter

Extreme Warming Ahead Even as Worst-Case Scenarios Grow ‘Obsolete’

January 23, 2023
271
Rachel Notley/Facebook

Notley Scorches Federal Just Transition Bill as Fossil CEO Calls for Oilsands Boom

January 23, 2023
257
United Nations

Salvage of $20B ‘Floating Time Bomb’ Delayed by Rising Cost of Oil Tankers

January 27, 2023
18
James Vincent Wardhaugh/flickr

Canada Sidelines Ontario’s Ring of Fire, Approves Separate Mining Project

December 4, 2022
379
Weirton, WV by Jon Dawson/flickr

IRON OXIDE: New Battery Brings Long-Duration Storage to Grids, 750 Jobs to West Virginia

January 23, 2023
493

Recent Posts

EcoAnalytics

Albertans Want a Just Transition, Despite Premier’s Grumbling

January 23, 2023
188
Sergio Boscaino/flickr

Dubai Mulls Quitting C40 Cities Over ‘Costly’ Climate Target

January 24, 2023
85
hangela/pixabay

New UK Coal Mine Faces Two Legal Challenges

January 24, 2023
43

Gas Stoves Enter U.S. Climate Culture War, Become ‘Bellwether’ for Industry

January 22, 2023
73
Jeff Hitchcock/flickr.

BREAKING: GFANZ Banks, Investors Pour Hundreds of Billions into Fossil Fuels

January 23, 2023
495

Exxon Had the Right Global Warming Numbers Through Decades of Denial: Study

January 17, 2023
223
Next Post
Julia Kilpatrick, Pembina Institute/flickr

May 3 Day of Action Pushes Canada to End Fossil Fuel Subsidies

The Energy Mix - The climate news you need

Copyright 2023 © Energy Mix Productions Inc. All rights reserved.

  • About
  • Contact
  • Privacy Policy and Copyright
  • Cookie Policy

Proudly partnering with…

scf_withtagline
No Result
View All Result
  • Canada
  • UK & Europe
  • Fossil Fuels
  • Ending Emissions
  • Community Climate Finance
  • Clean Electricity Grid
  • Cities & Communities

Copyright 2022 © Smarter Shift Inc. and Energy Mix Productions Inc. All rights reserved.

Manage Cookie Consent
To provide the best experiences, we use technologies like cookies to store and/or access device information. Consenting to these technologies will allow us to process data such as browsing behaviour or unique IDs on this site. Not consenting or withdrawing consent, may adversely affect certain features and functions.
Functional Always active
The technical storage or access is strictly necessary for the legitimate purpose of enabling the use of a specific service explicitly requested by the subscriber or user, or for the sole purpose of carrying out the transmission of a communication over an electronic communications network.
Preferences
The technical storage or access is necessary for the legitimate purpose of storing preferences that are not requested by the subscriber or user.
Statistics
The technical storage or access that is used exclusively for statistical purposes. The technical storage or access that is used exclusively for anonymous statistical purposes. Without a subpoena, voluntary compliance on the part of your Internet Service Provider, or additional records from a third party, information stored or retrieved for this purpose alone cannot usually be used to identify you.
Marketing
The technical storage or access is required to create user profiles to send advertising, or to track the user on a website or across several websites for similar marketing purposes.
Manage options Manage services Manage vendors Read more about these purposes
View preferences
{title} {title} {title}