Asheville NC activists confront Bank of America for coal industry investments

by: Clem Guttata

Sat Jun 09, 2007 at 12:10:47 PM EDT

Citizen activist take the streets!. As reported at Rising Tide North America and Asheville IndyMedia (with lots of pictures at both sites):

Today dozens of cyclists paid a surprise visit to Bank of America to protest their financial backing of coal companies as a part of the International Day of Action Against Climate Change and G8. After tying up downtown traffic, the 30-strong bike ride descended on the downtown Asheville headquarters of Bank of America. Once there, a number of people dumped coal in front of the main entrance, while another person spontaneously sacrificed their bike lock and locked the front doors shut.

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Bank of America plays a major role in perpetuating climate change by its massive investments in the coal industry. Pound for pound, burning coal releases more C02 emissions then any other fossil fuel. Bank of America has facilitated nearly $1 billion in loans to Massey Energy and Arch Coal, two of the largest companies involved in the environmentally devastating process of mountaintop removal coal mining. Mountaintop removal mining has already reduced 500 square miles of mountains to rubble and buried over 1,200 miles of streams in Southern Appalachia.

Bank of America has also made loans and facilitated stock offerings for Peabody Energy to the tune of several billion dollars. Peabody is infamous for its human rights violations against Native Americans. Since 1975, over 14,000 indigenous people, mostly Dine’, have been forcibly relocated off of their ancestral lands to make way for Peabody’s Black Mesa strip mine in northeastern Arizona. This strip mine, the largest in the US, has devastated thousands of acres of indigenous land and drained local aquifers that are essential for sustaining life in this desert climate. In addition to these abuses, Peabody Energy, along with a number of other companies funded by Bank of America, are pursuing the construction of a new wave of dirty coal plants.