BRATTLEBORO — The Climate Change Café project of Post Oil Solutions has decided hold a weekly protest vigil at the TD Bank branch on Main Street “for the foreseeable future.”
According to Tim Stevenson of Post Oil Solutions, on the strength of two protest vigils held on recent Fridays the protest vigils will continue to be held on Fridays from noon to 1 p.m. to coincide with the time working people typically conduct their banking.
He said the vigils will have two purposes: The first is to bring to the attention of the public what he called “the deep involvement that TD Bank has with tar sands, a fossil fuel that when extracted, processed and transported is more environmentally destructive than any other petroleum.”
“We will also encourage bank depositors to make a point of requesting that TD divest from TransCanada, the company that would build the Keystone XL pipeline to transport tar sands across the United States to the Gulf Coast for shipment abroad,” he said.
TD Bank Group (TD) is a global network of financial institutions owned by Toronto-Dominion. The conglomerate includes TD Asset Management and TD Bank, one of the 10 largest banks in the United States.
Together with Toronto-Dominion, TD Asset Management collectively owned over $1.8 billion in TransCanada stock as of March 31, making TD the second largest shareholder in the company that would build the Keystone XL pipeline, Stevenson said in a press release.
“At a time when the world needs to be seriously reducing its burning of carbon polluting fuels in order to avoid climate catastrophe, and hence, cease the drilling and extraction of fossil fuels, along with the construction of the necessary infrastructure, TD Bank is serving as a major investor in the proposed Keystone XL project and other tar sands pipelines,” he added.
Post Oil Solutions said it also wants to encourage all Vermonters to demand that state funds not be deposited with a bank invested in the Keystone XL or other tar sands projects.
In the fiscal year 2013, TD Bank held 66 percent of the state's cash, based on average end-of-day balances. During that period, the state paid the bank more than $787,000 in fees, Stevenson said.
He added that his group is coordinating with like-minded groups statewide to compel the state treasurer to remove state funds from TD Bank “and to place them in a facility that is not involved with supporting or financing fossil fuels.”