I used an L.L.Bean credit card for 40 years, but I cut mine up last year because it was a Citibank card, and Citibank is among the world’s top investors in fossil fuels. Third Act Maine volunteers, who want to reduce climate change, have been trying to convince L.L.Bean to change its credit card and L.L.Bean isn’t listening. It knows that our climate is threatened, and it could do something about it.
L.L.Bean cares about the outdoors. So why is it ignoring what Citibank’s investments in fossil fuels are doing to the environment? First, executives are trained to maximize profits in this quarter, and this card is profitable. What might happen to our children later is not their concern. And maybe some of them believe the fossil fuel propaganda that climate change is not a serious problem. But the latest projections are that climate change will cause as many as 1.2 billion people to emigrate by 2050, due to sea level rise, storms, heat, drought and wildfires.
And guess where displaced Americans will be going: New England! So we’ll have more out-of-staters buying up homes here, making our housing more unaffordable. And, eventually, a surge of homeless and unemployed Americans will come, needing our help. Then we’ll blame the fossil fuel industry and the companies that supported them, but that won’t help anything. It’ll be too late. Contact L.L.Bean now and ask it to fix its credit card.
Richard Thomas
Waterville
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