With Trump attacking clean energy and boosting fossil fuels, it’s more critical than ever that local governments do all they can to combat the climate crisis.
Fortunately, hundreds of cities are already working hard to reduce emissions from their buildings, transportation, and energy systems. But in the face of such dire threats, local governments can and must do more.
In particular, local governments should wield their influence as market participants to encourage the financial sector to support the energy transition. In New York City, we’re seeing what that could look like.
After years of campaigning, the city’s Comptroller Brad Lander finally announced last week that he’s recommending that the city’s pension funds move $42.3 billion away from BlackRock, owing to its failure to address the climate crisis.
If Lander is able to get this done ― by getting the recommendations passed at the pension fund board meetings this month ― it would be a huge deal. BlackRock controls ten percent of the entire stock market, managing more than $13 trillion in investment capital. No company has more influence over whether the private sector tackles the climate crisis.
Large as it is however, BlackRock has few more important clients than the City of New York. If anybody can move BlackRock to take climate seriously, it’s the good people of the city where the company is headquartered.
If New York moves tens of billions from BlackRock, it will be a great example of how local governments and pension funds can hold Wall Street accountable to its climate commitments.
Besides leveraging their pension funds, there are other steps that local governments can take, too. And here, I’m going to talk for a minute about municipal bonds. Yep, that’s right. Municipal bonds. I know, your eyes are probably already glazing over. But stay with me here.
Municipal bonds are a common way that city, county and state governments raise capital for things like building schools, refurbishing parks, and maintaining bridges and highways. Investors buy the municipal bonds from the government for an upfront lump sum, and the government pays the investors back with interest over the following couple of decades.
Now, here’s why we care about this: When a city issues a municipal bond, they hire a bank, known as the underwriter, to facilitate the deal with investors. The bank charges the government a fee for this service. And those fees can be significant. For example, banks have charged the City of Seattle $2.8 million in fees for underwriting municipal bonds between 2017 and 2025.
So, here’s the idea: local governments ensure that banks they hire to underwrite municipal bonds have commitments to eradicate the climate impacts from their loan books; banks that don’t have climate targets wouldn’t be eligible to compete for this lucrative business.
At a time when Wells Fargo has distinguished itself by becoming the only bank to entirely drop its 2030 and 2050 climate targets, such actions from local governments would create a powerful incentive to stop other banks following in Wells Fargo’s footsteps, even as the federal government assails climate action on all fronts.
As we move into 2026, we’re going to be experimenting with this strategy. For a start, you can read more about it in this piece that our friends at Elected Officials to Protect America, an alliance of locally elected officials that are climate champions, just shared out with their network.
We don’t know if this will work, but what we do know that with the White House captured by climate denying maniacs, it’s incumbent upon us all to figure out how we can get those that do care about reality ― including many of our cities, counties, and states ― to do everything they can in the climate fight.
In Solidarity,
– Alec Connon, Stop the Money Pipeline coalition director
News & Updates from the Coalition
– Insuring Communities, Not Fossil Fuels
As New York gears up for another big gubernatorial election, grassroots efforts to pass the landmark Insure Our Communities Act are picking up. Climate groups, housing justice organizations, and tenants unions are teaming up across the state to tell our legislators why they should co-sponsor this bill. Last session, we got 21 co-sponsors in the State Senate and the Assembly—this year, we want a groundswell so strong that leadership has no choice but to bring this bill to the floor. If you want to join the effort, join this listserv!
– Boycott T-Mobile
The Boycott T-Mobile weekend was a blast! In just a few months, the AFL-CIO added T-Mobile to the official AFL-CIO boycott list, the campaign took off on social media, and thousands of T-Mobile customers canceled their contracts right before the holiday season.
If you’re a T-Mobile customer and missed the boycott weekend, it’s not too late to get a less Trump-y phone carrier!
– Climate Organizers for Labor Action
As we step up our support of the union fight at Wells Fargo, we’re organizing support committees in cities with unionized branches to help Wells Fargo workers win their first contract. Check out if you live in a city with a unionized Wells Fargo branch.
– Fighting LNG Buildout
New Resource: “Fighting Fossil Gas Across the US and Canada,” an interactive story map that features stories from the frontlines of fights against LNG export terminals and bunker ports across the U.S. and Canada, and includes details about the banks funding the projects.
– Predictably crappy behavior from Trump’s financial regulators
In a setback for those of us in the game of holding corporations accountable, Trump’s financial “regulators” at the Securities & Exchange Commission (SEC) announced that they will effectively give companies complete discretion over what shareholder proposals they can block from going to a vote at their annual meetings.
This will likely mean that climate- & human rights-related shareholder proposals will be less likely to make it to a vote at companies’ annual meetings, blunting a shareholder tactic that has been used for years to push companies for action.
– JPMorgan Chase updates its policies on Amazon and Indigenous Rights
JP Morgan Chase, the world’s top fossil fuel financier, quietly committed to conducting “enhanced review” for transactions in the Amazon Biome and where there are deemed to be risks to Indigenous Peoples’ Rights, including the right to Free, Prior & Informed Consent.
While it’s good to see this small step forward, in this challenging political environment, it’s also important to note that enhanced review is not an exclusion, and there are many examples where banks claim to apply due diligence while continuing to finance harmful projects.
– 62 Faith Institutions Join the Fossil Fuel Divestment Movement
Right before Cop30, 62 faith institutions committed to fossil fuel divestment. They join more than 1,700 institutions, with combined assets of over $40 trillion, in committing to fossil fuel divestment.