Daniel Growald, Peter Gill Case and Valerie Rockefeller write:

One hundred years ago, as a deadly influenza gripped the world and the stock market dropped precipitously, our great-grandfather John D. Rockefeller Jr. began investing in New York banks to diversify the family’s business away from fossil fuels in the midst of the economic uncertainty.

The result was the beginning of our family’s century-long association with what is today JPMorgan Chase, known in its earlier incarnation as the “Rockefeller Bank.”

The similarities today are striking. A pandemic has killed more than a million people across the world and shows no signs of abating, and unease surrounds the economy. But that anxiety is not merely a consequence of the pandemic. The long-term outlook for the economy is clouded by a warming climate and its foreseen consequences.

A task force for the Commodity Futures Trading Commission put it succinctly in a recent report: “Climate change poses a major risk to the stability of the U.S. financial system and to its ability to sustain the American economy.”

That’s why the world’s biggest banks should do what our great-grandfather began to do in 1920 to spread the risks to his investments (though climate change was not yet on the horizon): move their businesses away from fossil fuels. Just as his father, John D. Rockefeller Sr., the oil tycoon and founder of Standard Oil, was a pivotal figure in the shaping of the oil industry and the modern corporation, so too must the financial leaders of today embrace innovation and move beyond the profits of fossil fuels to develop banking models that will excel in a zero-carbon world. [Continue reading…]