This week 350 Aotearoa climate campaigners will impersonate ANZ Bank staff in several satirical actions outside of ANZ branches. The actions will expose ANZ Banks’s current social and financial support of the fossil fuel industry: through its sponsorship of exclusive oil industry group, the Petroleum Club; and its lending to fossil fuel companies that enables industry growth.

ANZ is currently the bank operating in Aotearoa that lends the most money to the fossil fuel industry. It is also a sponsor of the Petroleum Club, an industry group focused on advancing the fossil fuel industry’s operations in Aotearoa

350 Aotearoa campaigner Claudia Palmer said “ANZ Bank is greenwashing its complicity in the climate crisis. While claiming to be carbon neutral it is lending to fossil fuel companies and sponsoring exclusive industry groups that enable the advancement of coal, oil, and gas projects that are causing the climate crisis.”

“ANZ relies on the secret nature of the Petroleum Club events to mask its relationship with oil and gas: if ANZ was proud of its sponsorship of the Petroleum Club it would promote its involvement in the same way that we see its brand all over sports teams and its other charity partners. We’re taking action and doing ANZ’s promotion on its behalf so that New Zealanders know the truth about ANZ’s financial support of the climate crisis.”

In Dunedin, the public will be offered an ANZ sponsored oily souvenir to take home. In Wellington, ‘oil’ taste-testers will be on offer to see whether the public prefer the classic Taranaki oil or, the hotly in pursuit Otago South Basin oil. In Auckland, members of the public can ‘vote’ on ANZ Banks’s next sponsorship of a fossil fuel project: an open cast coal mine on Mount Eden, oil drilling in the Waitemata Harbour, or a coal-fired power plant on Auckland’s Viaduct.

These actions are relaunching 350 Aotearoa’s Fossil Free Banks campaign, which has included calling for ANZ to cut its ties with the fossil fuel industry since 2015. The campaign successfully stopped ANZ from sponsoring the Petroleum Summit in 2016, and later that year over 500 people took direct action to shut down ANZ branches across New Zealand. Earlier this week, posters went up outside ANZ branches across New Zealand to expose ANZ Bank’s sponsorship of ‘The Petroleum Club’. The posters played on ANZ Bank’s recent ad campaigns, replacing the banks’ tagline ‘healthy homes start here’ with ‘the climate crisis starts here’, and featured ANZ’s logo dripping in oil. The posters also showed ANZ’s purported carbon emissions based on its lending to fossil fuel companies.

Palmer said “In 2019 no institution should want ties coal, oil, or gas companies on its books. ANZ must come clean and cut their ties with the fossil fuel industry.”

Details for the events are as follows:
• Dunedin: 12 noon, Thursday 22nd August 2019 at ANZ corner Hanover St & George St.
• Wellington: 12 noon, Thursday 22nd August 2019 at ANZ Willis St
• Auckland 12 noon, Friday 23rd August 2019 at 268 Queen St

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