logo

Has Joe Biden's pick as climate czar been a senior advisor at a major lender to the fossil-fuel industry?

Saturday, December 5, 2020
By Laura Brickman
YES

President-elect Joe Biden's choice as his "envoy for climate," John Kerry, has been chair of the Global Advisory Council at Bank of America since late 2017. From 2016 to 2019 the bank was the fourth-largest lender to the fossil-fuel industry, according to an analysis by a group of environmental organizations.

The bank says the council assists with strategy and relationships. When appointed, the former Secretary of State saluted the bank's "remarkable leadership as a corporate citizen" on climate change.

The lending analysis found that Bank of America in 2019 extended $48 billion in loans to the industry, out of $983 billon in loans and leases in total. During 2018-2019, the bank saw the largest absolute increase in fossil fuel financing of any institution, the report said. With other big U.S. banks it dominates financing of fracking, which Biden has said he will eliminate on federal lands.

This fact brief is responsive to conversations such as this one.
ABOUT THE CONTRIBUTOR
Between 2020 and 2022, under close editorial supervision, Gigafact contracted a group of freelance writers and editors to test the concepts for fact briefs and provide inputs to our software development process. We call this effort Gigafact Foundry. Over the course of these two years, Gigafact Foundry writers published over 1500 fact briefs in response to claims they found online. Their important work forms the basis of Gigafact formats and editorial guidelines, and is available to the public on Gigafact.org. Readers should be aware that while there is still a lot of relevant information to be found, not all fact briefs produced by Gigafact Foundry reflect Gigafact's current methods and standards for fact briefs. If you come across any that you feel are out of date and need to be looked at with fresh eyes, don't hesitate to contact us at support@gigafact.org.
FACT BRIEF BY
facebook
twitter
email
email