Holding signs saying things like "Tell Wells Fargo: Stop Funding Climate Change," a group of climate activists has revived the era of downtown climate protests in San Francisco Monday morning.
Twenty activists from the Oil & Gas Action Network chained themselves Monday to the historic Wells Fargo stagecoach at Wells Fargo headquarters at 420 Montgomery Street.
A woman named Claire informed SFist of the protest Monday morning, saying that the activists were conducting this action "to protest Wells' continuing financial support of fossil fuel projects around the world."
"We're gonna stay until they arrest us," Claire said.
Dozens of #ClimateJustice activists have chained themselves together to occupy @WellsFargo headquarters in San Francisco. Before the bank's annual shareholder meeting tomorrow, we are demanding Wall Street #StopFundingFossilFuels & #DefundClimateChaos pic.twitter.com/8cJ0vldOoF
— Oil and Gas Action Network (@oil_action) April 25, 2022
The group tweeted that they were protesting today ahead of a Wells Fargo shareholder meeting tomorrow, and one of their signs says "Pass Shareholder Res. #9," which must have to do with fossil fuel investment and climate change.
Update: Wells Fargo put out a statement through a spokesperson saying, "Wells Fargo has committed to aligning our activities to support the goals of the Paris Agreement and to work with our clients during their transition to a low-carbon economy. Wells Fargo set a goal of net-zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050 and is committed to setting interim emissions targets for the Oil & Gas and Power portfolios no later than the end of 2022. Setting targets for carbon-intensive sectors is the approach banks are implementing to operationalize their net-zero goals. This approach is guided by leading industry groups, such as the Net-Zero Banking Alliance (NZBA), which Wells Fargo joined in October 2021."
It's been at least two years since we've seen this kind of protest in downtown SF, so we'll take it as a continuing sign of the reawakening of downtown streets.
A group of youth activists from the Sunrise Movement did a symbolic march from the town of Paradise to Nancy Pelosi's house in June 2021, in order to call for lawmakers' support of the Green New Deal.
But to our knowledge, it's been since October 2019 that we've seen live climate-action protest on the streets of downtown San Francisco, when the group known as Extinction Rebellion blocked Gough Street. A month earlier, in September 2019, climate activists blocked off several blocks of Montgomery Street, focusing on banks like Wells Fargo.
