California is experiencing a rise in troubling and intensifying climate change-related catastrophes. Royal Bank of Canada (RBC) and its subsidiary, City National Bank (CNB), have an outsized influence on the fossil fuel industry, financing projects that devastate the environment and disproportionately harm communities of color. Climate change advocates and Rise Economy members are speaking out against these practices, calling for urgent accountability. Below are their voices—testimonials that underscore the growing demand for banks to divest from fossil fuels and invest in a sustainable, equitable future.

These testimonials were originally set to be delivered directly to RBC and CNB representatives, who had agreed to meet with climate advocates and community leaders. However, in a last-minute move, the banks canceled the meeting, avoiding accountability for their harmful practices. This eleventh-hour cancellation only underscores the banks’ unwillingness to face the consequences of their actions and the communities they continue to harm.

My name Emma Silber. I work as the Climate Justice Associate for Physicians for Social Responsibility – Los Angeles and my primary issue area is working to end neighborhood oil drilling in the City of LA and throughout California. I also support coordination of the STAND-LA coalition (Stand Together Against Neighborhood Drilling – Los Angeles) which is a racial and environmental justice coalition of community groups working for and with Angelenos on the front lines of urban oil extraction. We work alongside empowered residents to uphold their human right to health and safety by fighting to eliminate neighborhood oil drilling, holding elected officials and government agencies accountable for their role in protecting public health and ensuring a just transition to an equitable, health-promoting economy.

I want to start by sharing a bit about neighborhood oil drilling in Los Angeles and why it is an ongoing public health crisis for BIPOC frontline communities. We have almost 4,000 active wells and almost 3500 idle wells in the County of LA. 70% of these wells operate within 1,500 feet of people’s homes, schools, workplaces, and other sensitive receptors, despite significant research demonstrating that there is no safe distance between oil and gas sites and communities. And, low-income communities of color are the most impacted by neighborhood oil drilling. 74% of residents living within 1,500 ft of active LA city oil wells are people of color, 42% live 200% below the Federal Poverty Line, and 56% are renters. Paired with the lack of access to adequate healthcare, and historical impacts of redlining on air quality, means that communities in these areas are more vulnerable to the pollution impacts of oil drilling.

Research from the last decade points to a number of different negative health impacts from living near drilling including respiratory harm, throat and nasal irritation, headaches, skin issues, nosebleeds, adverse impacts during pregnancy, physiological stress, and higher cancer mortality, including children with leukemia.

These adverse health impacts exist because the extraction process at an oil site creates air pollution through the emission of toxic chemicals that can irritate the lungs or skin, are carcinogenic, cause respiratory harm, or are endocrine-disrupting chemicals that can cause long-term developmental or reproductive harm. Idle wells have also been found to leak benzene, hydrogen sulfide, and methane as well as contaminate surface and groundwater. The accumulation of methane also poses an explosive risk.

I think it’s also important that we recognize and uplift the many stories and personal experiences behind these statistics and facts. I’ll just share one today, but I urge you to speak with the folks most directly impacted by this issue.

Another important step in phasing out oil drilling in the region will be the shutting down and cleaning up of all of the active and idle wells. At the end of their use, each well must be thoroughly plugged and abandoned so that it will not leak toxic fluids into the air and groundwater. This is an important source of jobs for those folks currently employed to work on active oil sites. One report estimated that approximately 24,000 direct, indirect, and induced jobs would be created in California if we were to plug only our idle and orphan wells, so this number only increases when adding in active wells. Your bank has the opportunity to support a just transition plan for oil workers to move into family-sustaining jobs while empowering frontline communities to shape future land uses that meet community needs.

At Esperanza, we have seen the devastation in the communities of South Central LA – which is representative of so many LI BIPOC communities in LA, CA, and this country – wrought by industrial activity that has poisoned the community AND by the lack of investment in healthy affordable housing.  These twin crises – the housing affordability and homelessness crisis and the climate crisis and that of environmental racism – have been made possible because of the role that banks, themselves, have played in financing the types of development and industries that we’re talking about – the ones that made it okay to designate these communities as sacrifice zones for the benefit of whiter and wealthier neighborhoods.  

You are doing this to us, RBC and CNB.  You represent both ends of these crises.

The fact is that, as it relates directly to RBC & LA frontline communities, you have some huge investments in the fossil fuel industry – RBC was the 7th worst in the world in 2023 ($28.235B) and since 2016 ($256.445B).  This includes investments in several such companies right there in LA and results in direct negative impacts in low-income BIPOC communities here.  So we are here to tell you how our communities have been harmed by this hand that you have that is doing two things simultaneously – poisoning our communities by investing in fossil fuels and divesting from the communities when it comes to housing.  

We work with communities who are having to deal with poisons in their and seeping into their homes, making them and their children sick, sometimes with devastating and fatal results AND who are also just struggling to make ends meet and keep a roof over their heads.  We are seeing the impacts of your choice of investments, and lack thereof, play out in real time.  And, it has got to change.  We really need banks/YOU to step up and take responsibility for the harm that you have created and helped perpetuate AND to take steps to not only repair and redress the harm, but to also help the communities thrive, so that they no longer have to choose between their health and their homes, and so that the neighborhoods in which folks live are healthy in every sense of the word.

But let’s take a moment and talk a bit about redlining because, to be clear, CNB, you have been part of the problem .  It is a fact that you actually did redline having been subject to the largest redlining settlement in US Dept of Justice history. At the same time that redlining policies laid the groundwork for the segregated housing landscape in LA, the oil industry was expanding neighborhood oil drilling in LI BIPOC communities, such as South Central LA and  Wilmington in the South Bay.

So not only have communities been poisoned and the existing stock of affordable made unlivable…they are also facing rising rents, gentrification, and eviction & displacement BECAUSE of predatory lending & corporate investment and the financing of extractive & exploitative industrial practices  that puts profits above public health – community members continue to face rising rents, gentrification, and displacement if not outright homelessness.   

This is what you have been part of CNB. And these communities deserve better.

My name is Wendy Miranda, I am a community member from Wilmington, a predominantly working class community of color located in the Harbor Area of Los Angeles. I grew up in this community and have called Wilmington my home for more than 20 years now. I live 1.5 miles away from the Phillips 66 refinery and grew up seeing this refinery polluting my community since I could remember. I would see it from my window, wherever I am driving or walking – there really is no escaping the refinery, everywhere you turn, you can see it. My community has been harmed by this industry for so long – community members live right on the fenceline of the refinery and many living with respiratory issues, such as asthma. In my personal experience, I did not have asthma until I was 19 years old and have also had unexplainable, random nose bleeds. My mother has asthma as well. She relies on a nebulizer everyday and has to use it the minute she wakes up and right before she falls asleep. My experience and my mother’s are just one of many stories that show how the industry has affected our lives. My community should never have to be a sacrifice zone for the sake of industry profits and RBC/CNB has played a role in this. The investments of RBC/CNB to the Phillips 66 refinery has perpetuated the harms that my community and family has faced. Now is the time for RBC/CNB to divest from the Phillips 66 refinery and from all refineries, oil wells, and fossil fuels, in general, so that this harm does not continue in my community or other communities who are being harmed. RBC/CNB should rather take responsibility and allocate resources directly to our communities who have been sacrifice zones and have experienced the brunt of the climate and housing crisis for decades to truly repair the harm that RBC/CNB has perpetuated.

We are extremely disappointed by Royal Bank of Canada’s and City National Bank’s eleventh-hour cancellation of their meeting with Rise Economy. The low-income and BIPOC communities for whom Rise Economy advocates deserve better. RBC and CNB have profited from these communities through harmful practices like redlining and inadequate community reinvestment. Under-investment in our communities while financing of fossil fuel industries enriches shareholders at the expense of community health, economic stability, and well-being.

We had hoped that the bank’s agreement to meet signaled a genuine commitment to improving its practices and accountability, and we were eager for a meaningful discussion on the critical need for more sustainable banking practices. By walking away from this important conversation with Rise Economy, the bank signals it is not serious about making changes that benefit communities. This is especially troubling given RBC’s poor renewable-to-fossil fuel funding ratio of 0.4 to 1, starkly below the International Energy Agency’s (IEA) recommended 4:1.

We urge the bank to acknowledge its impact on our communities, and to reengage with Rise Economy to discuss the necessary shifts towards sustainable financing, crucial for both environmental and community health.