The eventual death of oil and thermal coal won’t come from environmentalists, or even directly from renewable energy–it will come when big banks decide to stop financing it, rendering it ‘unbankable’. That’s exactly what Goldman Sachs has just done, in a first for a major finance institution. As of last week, Goldman Sachs is the first big U.S. bank to rule out financing new oil exploration or drilling in the Arctic, as well as new thermal coal mines anywhere in the world. The bank’s latest environmental policy declares climate change as one of the “most significant environmental challenges of the 21st century” and has pledged to help its clients manage climate impacts more effectively, including through the sale of weather-related catastrophe bonds. The giant bank also committed to invest $750 billion over the next decade into areas that focus on climate transition. It may not be the last. Moving […]