Wednesday morning, they had symbolically “redecorated” the facades of the BNP-Paribas agency on rue de Metz, in Toulouse, in blood red color. During the night of Wednesday to Thursday, the militants of the Extinction Rebellion movement of the Pink City passed to the “upper stage” by sabotaging twelve distributors of Toulouse belonging to four banks, in particular the Savings Bank or the Crédit Agricole.
An action they claimed, denouncing the practices of these four groups and their consequences on global warming. “On the environmental level, these four banks, despite their green speeches, allocate 70% of their energy financing to oil, coal and shale gas. In total, these 41.5 billion euros of black financing condemn us according to the latest reports from Oxfam to a trajectory above 4°C. While the last part of the IPCC report is final, ”said the activists in a press release.
The activities also criticize banking practices strictly speaking, which mean that “millions of French people pay up to 50 euros per month in ‘small bank charges’, which, accumulated, represent 7 billion euros stolen each year. Euro after euro, the precarious suffer from the dictatorship of money which reinforces inequalities, and locks them into an infernal loop”, they insist, calling for an immediate halt to fossil fuel financing or even a cap on bank charges at 10 euros per month and 100 euros per year.
Extinction Rebellion also asks the groups for transparency on the environmental and social impacts of their activities.