Why Your Bank Is Worse for the Planet Than Your SUV

Your bank account is living a perfectly severed life. In your outie world, you're dutifully sorting recycling and driving your hybrid, while your innie dollars are trapped in a financial Lumon basement, forced to refine numbers for oil pipelines without any memory of your environmental values. This isn't corporate fiction—it's banking reality.

The Severed Floor of Banking

Most people assume their money just "sits" in the bank like an employee in a Lumon break room—quietly waiting to be called upon. The truth would trigger an Overtime Contingency: banks use your deposits to fund loans and investments in carbon-intensive industries with all the cold efficiency of Harmony Cobel enforcing company protocol.

Since the 2015 Paris Agreement, the world's 60 largest banks have funneled $6.9 trillion into fossil fuel financing. By contrast, only about $203 billion went to renewable energy—a measly 5% of what went to fossil fuels. Your money isn't refining mysterious data; it's refining actual oil.

The carbon footprint would make Dylan G. rage-break his keyboard: a $1,000 balance in a Big Four U.S. bank generates as much CO₂ in a year as flying from New York to Seattle. Keeping about $62,500 in such a bank produces the same carbon as all your driving, heating, flying, and cooking for six months.1 Your bank choice has severed itself completely from your environmental intentions.

The Board's Worst Offenders

Not all banks are equal in the corporate hierarchy. A few financial institutions are responsible for the lion's share of fossil fuel funding:

Find out if your bank is on the list. Read the full article on our Substack