Life has many journeys. Last week, I borrowed a hydrogen fuel vehicle and barreled down Interstate 5 from San Francisco to Los Angeles with my friend and colleague, Maria. I could not fly yet, having just had my knee replaced (new knee, new me!), and so (metaphorically) jumped at the chance to borrow this new mode of transport from friends at Energy Independence Now and share the clean energy revolution journey with all of you.
Beneficial State Bank and Foundation are joined on a journey to change the banking system for good, and frankly, nothing less will suffice. If banking is the original and most powerful form of crowd-funding, at least metaphorically, we depositors and other stakeholders should have much more influence over what our deposits fund, in accordance with our inclusive and equitable social and environmental values. In particular, banks should contribute to the health and well-being of people and the planet but first, they must stop financing climate disaster and social unrest.
As a bank owner, investor, and practitioner, Beneficial State Foundation embarked on a new journey last year to administer the Clean Vehicle Assistance Program, funded by California Climate Investments. By providing grants and fair and transparent financing, the program’s goal is to enable those who had the least to do with causing climate change — low-consumption households — be the first into hybrid and electric vehicles that clean up their neighborhoods and reduce off-the-chart asthma rates. We hope this program will be expanding to allow many more people access to clean vehicle options.
Then there’s the journey we are all on toward full agency and accountability. Of course, we hope everyone will take responsibility for keeping their money in a responsible bank that respects their own values. But there is much more needed in these pivotal times. We have to stop pretending that forces outside our control are killing our species. There are no robots insisting we pay workers too little to live. No immutable laws of physics have elevated greenhouse gas emissions or stuffed the oceans with unsustainable levels of carbon. The moral universe sees none of the differences we foment based on race, or faith or gender. We need to look no further than ourselves and the organizations we create for cause and culpability. What we have done, only we can undo.
Taking our lead from the recent study funded by the Leonardo DiCaprio Foundation, imagine what we could do if we throw our weight (and deposits!) behind securing 100% renewable energy, revamping 100% of agriculture to regenerative models, and dedicating half of the earth to the wild, including those migratory corridors of old from whence came our most prolific bread baskets and the sink into which excess atmospheric and oceanic carbon can best go.
I was born in California but my experience is that no one is as zealous as the recently converted. So I end with a song for my husband, Tom Steyer, who has traveled an extraordinary journey from New York City to California, and all my colleagues at Beneficial State and Foundation who are zealous advocates for positive change every day. From expert bankers and investors to political activists, from daily labors to iconoclastic advocacy, may their travels goad other people — both powerful and not quite yet — to their own agency, accountability, and action.
