Royal Bank of Scotland is under fierce attack for investing hundreds of millions of pounds in US companies that remove the tops of mountains to get at coal inside.
More than 500 mountain summits have been removed by explosives in the Appalachians, West Virginia, over the past few years. The process releases toxic waste into streams, pollutes the air and threatens the health of local communities.
RBS has been named as the world's seventh-biggest financial backer of mountaintop removal (MTR), with £235.6 million of lending and underwriting in 2012.
A number of major American mining companies have benefited from RBS money.
The bank is set to come under fire for funding such large-scale environmental destruction from protesters at its annual general meeting, at Gogarburn, Edinburgh on Tuesday.
Paul Daly, corporate accountability campaigner with Friends of the Earth Scotland, said: "RBS is still financing corporations which undertake horrific operations like MTR, threatening the local environment and adding to climate change globally."
Extreme Investments, a report on the US coal industry by the Rainforest Action Network, Banktrack and green group the Sierra Club, lists RBS along with Citigroup, Barclays, Morgan Stanley and others as the main backers of MTR.
RBS is reviewing its policies and approach to MTR companies. A spokeswoman said: "We apply enhanced environmental and social due diligence to our clients involved in MTR, and engage with them on how they can meet positive standards of corporate responsibility."
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article