I took a 💩 in the sky

Regets, lessons, and financial exclusion

View this email in your browser Reflect: Big money; big meanies Estimated reading time: 3 minutes September topic: sustainable finance This week's module: 1. READ | 2. LISTEN | 3. ACT | 4. REFLECT Welcome back to Changeletter by Soapbox Project. I'm the author, Nivi Achanta, and I make it easy for you to fight climate change in 3 minutes every week.   What's up this week Another day, another potty mouth subject line in today's email, but I had to share something that haunts me.   So, as you know, flying is TERRIBLE for the environment. This month during my vacation, I likely emitted about HALF the average carbon footprint of someone living in Britain, just through my flights.   One way we justify flying is "these flights will happen anyway". Weeell... there were only about 30 people in my 100+ passenger jet. The WHOLE middle section of the plane was empty. I want to figure out a realistic framework for travel that meaningfully mitigates flight travel emissions, while knowing that sometimes we can't (or won't) avoid them, but for now, I'm just sharing my shame with you as I process 😩🙀   Today, I'll focus on being helpful in areas we actually have control over/decisions that are easy to make — divesting our personal money from fossil fuels A$AP.   This REFLECT is about banking disparities in Chicago, USA. It's just one of maaany examples of financial institutions actively working to exclude people. Another example worth noting is how women worldwide are excluded from financial systems.   Sustainable finance isn't just about emitting less CO2. It's about building an equitable world.   Reply to this email and tell me — what does banking discrimination look like in your country/city? Do you have personal stories to share?   From the Soapbox   Sustainable finance accountability checklist. Get points and win prizes for following through on our action items! Join our community to get all our weekly events for free, make new friends, find sustainable product recs, look for jobs, and more. In October, we're having 2 fireside chats, a letter-writing campaign to incarcerated campaign, and a bunch of hangouts. More info to come.   Your bite-sized actions It's important to highlight that banks do a lotttt of shady stuff with our hard-earned cash. In most countries including the USA, you need the frickin bank to do anything, like buy a house. According to this Home Mortgage Lending Inequalities article on banking disparities:   Loans for housing purchases are much harder to get in minority neighborhoods. "68.1% of dollars loaned for housing purchases went to majority-white neighborhoods, while just 8.1% went to majority-black neighborhoods and 8.7% went to majority-Latino neighborhoods."   The culprits are the same. JP Morgan Chase, as we learned earlier this month, is one of the biggest villains investing in the climate crisis. In Chicago, "for every dollar the bank loaned in white neighborhoods, it invested just 2.4 cents in the city's black communities". At least they're consistent lol??   Race, not economic status. Even middle-class Black Americans can't get the same loans — simply because a home is in a historically Black neighborhood, it can be appraised (valued by lenders) for a much lower amount.   Discrimination in lending is structural, whether we're talking about gender, race, or anything else. But we can fix our financial systems!   P.S. Last week, some of you mentioned one of your struggles was just finding a sustainable bank internationally — you can use bank.green's database to find options around the world. Upcoming Reply to this email with some topic requests for October, November, and December. Copyright © 2021 Soapbox Project, All rights reserved. You are receiving this email because you signed up for our free action plans via social media, Tech Ethics Coalition, a meeting with Nivi, or our website! Our mailing address is: Soapbox Project 415 Mission St. San Francisco, California 94105 Add us to your address book Want to change how you receive these emails? You can update your preferences or unsubscribe from this list.