Palm | Kelapa Sawit

Blog subitted by Debra Slasor

Last week, Bank of America released a new coal policy on their website announcing that they would “phase out financing of companies whose predominant method of extracting coal is through mountain top removal.” We were thrilled. We celebrated. We sent out a press release praising Bank of America for their decision to move away from financing mountaintop removal coal mining, and pressuring them to go a step further and pull out of coal financing altogether.

Bank of America’s announcement, and the responses of RAN and many of our allies picked up a fair amount of press coverage. I was pleased that the press coverage focused on Bank of America’s culpability in the practice of mountaintop removal. We were especially pleased to know that reporters were calling Bank of America representatives to ask hard questions about their vague policy, such as what is BoA’s time-line for phasing out mountaintop removal? And what companies in BoA’s portfolio will this policy affect?