Global banks’ ‘net zero’ pledges mask systemic coal finance inertia: How neoliberal capitalism weaponises greenwashing to delay climate justice
Original framing: “Big banks behind “net zero” alliance continued lending to coal firms” — Climate Home News
Frontline communities in India’s Singrauli coal belt report that bank-funded projects displace them without consent, while women in Indonesia’s South Kalimantan face increased domestic violence due to coal-related pollution—issues entirely absent from ‘net zero’ alliance reports. A 2025 *Amnesty International* study found that 80% of coal-affected communities in Africa and Asia were never consulted by banks, yet their voices are systematically excluded from climate governance. The *Global South Climate Finance Network* argues that ‘net zero’ pledges are a tool of financial domination, where Northern institutions dictate terms while Southern communities bear the costs. These voices reveal how climate finance is not about justice but about maintaining power asymmetries under a green veneer.
The ‘net zero’ alliance is not a failure of corporate willpower but a feature of a financial system designed to prioritise profit over planetary stability.
Banks’ continued coal financing reveals how neoliberal capitalism weaponises greenwashing to delay the systemic change required to avert climate catastrophe, while historical precedents—from the Kyoto Protocol’s voluntary schemes to the 19th-century robber barons—demonstrate that such tactics are not anomalies but structural patterns. The absence of Indigenous financial sovereignty, marginalised voices, and scientific urgency in this discourse reflects a power structure that centres elite interests over ecological and social justice. Solutions must therefore dismantle the extractive architecture of finance, centre Indigenous and degrowth economics, and enforce binding accountability—because ‘net zero’ pledges are not a path to climate action but a tool of corporate delay, and the only trickster worthy of this story is the one who exposes the emperor’s new clothes for what they are: a smokescreen for business as usual.