The City is urging climate action but its banks need to do more

L&G wants greener homes while the City of London Corporation is launching a climate strategy. Yet still the banks fund carbon polluters, writes James Moore

The City of London Corporation wants financial companies to get involved in its plan for climate action (Getty)

It’s hard to get attention when “we’ve got to save the planet to save the economy” turns into something like “L&G calls on government to take urgent action to reduce emissions from the built environment”.

That latter came out at the end of last week, in the form of an open letter to said government, signed by three senior bods including the head of sustainability. And there were some good ideas in it.

But it’s all about messaging. That sort of messaging runs the risk of inducing a yawn in even the most ardent greenie, let alone a government that operates by means of three-bullet-point slogans (although some of them are pretty rubbish too – what does stay alert even mean?).