By Jayla Burton, Program Manager
Financial institutions have poured more than $3.6 trillion into fossil fuels in the last five years.
Given the links between fossil fuels and increased breast cancer risk, it’s unacceptable for Susan G. Komen® and Bank of America to partner on a Pink Ribbon Banking Program in the name of breast cancer.
Take action today and let Komen know it’s time to end this hypocritical partnership.
A recent report from Rainforest Action Network found Bank of America was one of the top three financial institutions to fund worldwide fossil fuel expansion between 2016 and 2020. Last year alone, Bank of America invested over $42.1 billion in fossil fuel projects.
More specifically, Bank of America owns substantial stock in Enbridge, a Canadian pipeline company that was responsible for the 2010 oil spill in the Kalamazoo River in Michigan, the largest on-land oil spill in American history, which was estimated to total one million gallons of oil. Since 2002, Enbridge has spilled 2.8 million gallons of hazardous liquids, resulting in the catastrophic devastation of our land and water, and increased environmental contamination linked to a range of diseases and disorders, including breast cancer.
Bank of America-backed Enbridge is the company responsible for the controversial tar sands pipeline Line 3, which runs through Anishinaabe land in Minnesota and violates the treaty rights of many Indigenous folx. The pipeline, and the spills it has already caused in production, expose all of us, but more specifically, Indigenous, Black, and People of Color communities to high levels of hazardous air and water pollution.
Additionally, we cannot ignore the human rights violations that occur in erecting pipeline infrastructure. Water protectors are over-policed, criminalized, and subject to state-sanctioned violence, and Indigenous communities have reported increased rates of human trafficking and missing and murdered women as the fossil fuel industry ravages their communities.
Environmental leaders called out Bank of America’s hypocrisy when the institution sponsored New York’s Climate Action Week while at the same time renewing funding for Line 3. Susan G. Komen® is flagrantly displaying the same hypocrisy in running a pink ribbon promotion with a bank that backs the cancer-causing fossil fuel industry. We’ll call it out for what it is: pinkwashing.
Join us and demand Susan G. Komen® stop banking on breast cancer.