On Friday 10 May, the UK Climate Choir movement raised its voice in song against fossil fuel financier Standard Chartered outside its annual shareholder meeting. Protesters did so with a little help from two unlikely bedfellows: pop country legend Taylor Swift and iconic Star Wars villain Darth Vader.
Climate Choir: causing trouble as shareholders walk in
Climate Choir singers serenaded shareholders and board members at Standard Chartered’s AGM. They did so to protest its ongoing role in fueling the climate crisis.
Protesters sang adapted lyrics to the tune of Taylor Swift’s ‘I Knew You Were Trouble’ singing to call out the bank’s polluting investments:
Alongside this, trumpets performing the Star Wars Imperial March theme accompanied the singers as they unfurled a banner depicting the message “Standard Chartered – Here to Destroy Your Planet”:
Protesters also held banners highlighting the bank’s investment in destructive projects in the Global South:
Standard Chartered – a climate villain
Climate Choir campaigners staged their protest to call out Standard Chartered’s complicity in the climate crisis and human rights violations.
Crucially, the bank is a serial financier of fossil fuels. According to the 2023 Banking on Climate Chaos report, the bank has financed fossil fuels to the tune of $46.156bn between 2016 and 2022.
On top of this, the bank scrapped its membership of a major climate scheme in 2023. This was the Science Based Targets Initiative (SBTi) – a voluntary climate certification benchmark.
However, as the Canary previously reported, the SBTi has been awash in accusations of greenwash. Moreover, it has jam-packed its membership with an assembly of infamous climate-wrecking companies and human rights violators. As a result, the Canary argued that the SBTi is:
a glorified greenwashing front, designed to massage the sustainability-leaning egos of some of the world’s biggest corporate polluters.
Given this, Standard Chartered would be right at home among these prolific corporate climate villains. However, the bank has snubbed the de facto greenwashing scheme. Specifically, it did so because of concerns it could hinder its ability to continue financing fossil fuels. In other words, it’s not even pretending to dial down its enthusiasm for funding the companies destroying the planet.
Destroying the planet
So naturally, the bank has continued flirting with ecocidal and climate destructive oil and gas projects.
While financing projects directly, Standard Chartered also provides loans and underwrites bonds to companies causing environmental damage. Notably, campaigners at the AGM concentrated on two major fossil fuel developments financed by Standard Chartered.
In the Philippines, it is financing Filipino company San Miguel Corporation (SMC). Crucially, the company is the driving force behind a massive liquified natural gas (LNG) buildout in the Verde Island Passage (VIP). The VIP is a strait and the most biodiverse marine habitat in the world, dubbed the “Amazon of the Oceans”.
There, the existing and planned gas projects are wreaking havoc on communities and the environment. The projects are exposing the Batangas communities and surrounding provinces to toxic air and water pollution. Moreover, these projects have threatened marine and plant life, impacting fish catch for the local fishing communities.
Avril De Torres from the Philippine-based Centre for Energy, Ecology and Development (CEED) and Protect Verde Island Passage (Protect VIP) said:
Standard Chartered is the biggest financier of San Miguel Corporation, having channeled US $184 million to the Philippines’ biggest gas expansionist and major coal developer from 2021 to 2023 alone. By funding SMC, Standard Chartered is bringing destruction to communities and ecosystems across the country, including the Philippines’ own Amazon of the Oceans – the Verde Island Passage.
Another climate and community-wrecking project
Meanwhile, Standard Chartered-financed LNG is also destroying ecological biodiversity and communities in Mozambique. Projects there have worsened violent conflict, forced communities off their lands, and ravaged natural marine and coastal ecosystems. Companies are displacing fishing and farming communities far from their coastal and agricultural lands so they can no longer conduct their livelihoods.
TotalEnergies is one such company exploiting LNG in Mozambique. It is involved in a joint venture to restart the gargantuan climate bomb Monzambique LNG project. Burning the extracted gas would produce up to 4.5 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent. Alarmingly, this is more the combined annual greenhouse gas emissions of the EU.
Of course this severely increases the risk of climate crisis-fueled disasters like deadly Cyclone Freddy in 2023. Despite this, Standard Chartered has agreed a $500m loan for the project.
In April, a coalition of non-profits also called out Standard Chartered and other banks for continuing to facilitate Total’s climate-wrecking business through new bonds.
Daniel Ribeiro from Justiça Ambiental (JA!) and Friends of the Earth Mozambique said:
Standard Chartered is offering a US $500 million loan to a gas project in Mozambique that is hurting communities, our economy, and the global climate system. The Mozambique LNG project is creating conditions that worsen the violence in the region that has been ongoing since 2017, and has created a number of human rights violations in the process of resettling communities.
Climate Choir calling out big polluters in song
The Climate Choir Movement was founded in Bristol in the Autumn of 2022. It uses voices in peaceful and creative protests against corporations fueling climate breakdown.
Standard Chartered isn’t the first time the choir has called out big polluters through song. As the Canary reported in March, it occupied Parliament and regaled MPs with its revised rendition of Handel’s Hallelujah Chorus. It was protesting the government’s recent approval of the enormous North Sea Rosebank oil field.
Additionally, the choir has performed inside museums and corporate AGMs, outside airports and investment companies, courts, and cathedrals.
Co-founder of the Climate Choir Movement Jo Flanagan said:
Last year we sang at Barclays AGM. In March we occupied and sang in the Houses of Parliament. And today we say to Standard Chartered ‘your standards are twisted’. While they continue to invest in dirty gas and coal, global warming has exceeded temperatures of 1.5 degrees Celsius over a 12-month period. This is a dire warning to humanity — a warning that some bankers still do not seem to heed.
And the group has grown from strength to strength. It now boasts some 700 singers in 13 participating choirs in Bath, Bristol, Ballycastle, Exeter, Forest of Dean, Guildford, London, Oxford, Plymouth, Portsmouth, Sheffield, Southampton, and Swansea.
Climate Choir director Kate Honey is a composer whose work has been performed internationally. For the Choir’s latest action, they rewrote Taylor Swift’s lyrics to call out the bank’s controversial fossil fuel investment practices. They said:
The new lyrics are our way of creatively challenging Standard Chartered’s continuing funding of fossil fuel projects. The bank and its board are acting as climate villains. Their investments do not benefit local communities. They are on the wrong side of history and It is time for them to give up on dirty fuels and
invest in renewables.
Feature and in-text images via the Andrea Domeniconi/UK Climate Choir Movement
