Climate Change News: Environmental Activists Protest Credit Suisse, UBS Due To Fossil Fuel Financing

Environmental activists in Switzerland on Monday protested two of the country's largest banks, Credit Suisse (CS) and UBS (UBS), for financing the fossil fuel industry.

Protesters blocked Credit Suisse's headquarters in Zurich, leading police to arrest around two dozen demonstrators. Some of the protesters chained themselves to structures in the area to make it more difficult for police to detain them.

"Banks have a good image here, and under this squeaky clean image, they are financing dirty business all over the world," Frida Kohlmann, a spokeswoman for Collective Climate Justice, one of the activist groups that helped organized the demonstration, told Reuters.

Collective Climate Justice on Monday posted on Twitter that 60 of their activists were sitting in Swiss jail as a result of the Zurich protests.

A similar demonstration occurred in the city of Basel, where Switzerland's largest bank UBS is located.

A report released earlier this year by European environmental organizations said that UBS and Credit Suisse have financed fossil fuel firms to a tune of $83 billion in the last three years. The report also noted "that 33 global banks have provided $1.9 trillion to fossil fuel companies since the adoption of the Paris climate accord at the end of 2015."

Climate change has become a prominent subject in Europe, as France recently experienced its hottest summer on record. In June, Spain experienced its biggest wildfires in 20 years.

A 16-year old Swedish environmental activist, Greta Thunberg, has recently gained attention in combating climate change. Thunberg, who has over 727,000 followers on Twitter, has been part of a 46-week strike which has involved skipping school every Friday to stand outside the Swedish parliament.