It's TED Talks Daily. I'm your host, Elise Hume.

Financial institutions like banks have outsized power in the fight against climate change.

They finance fossil fuel industries, after all.

In her talk from the 2021 countdown summit, financial responsibility campaigner Lucy Pinson makes a convincing case

for why financiers should stop backing polluters and polluting as soon as possible.

When we think about climate change and pollution, we usually think about all soaked birds, fossil gas platforms

in the Arctic, or black smoke rising above coal plants. We never think about banks,

insurers and investors, but we should because money is a driving force beyond fossil fuel extraction

and environmental destruction. The most polluting sector on the planet is not fossil fuels. It's

finance. Sure, you've heard banks are increasingly putting money into green projects.

And yes, they are financing green projects, but they are doing it on top of new polluting oil, coal and gas projects.

I have been looking at the mass for a decade, and it's still a green droplet in an ocean of pollution.

I started to campaign to protect the environment and human rights when I was at university,

and I cannot count how many times I've heard financiers stealing me,

sorry, we need call.

Sometimes they said we can make it clean.

Mostly I've heard it's impossible.

There is nothing we can do.

Rather than be discouraged, that gave me the strength to prove them wrong.

But how does someone like me with a small group of partners take on the big banks and insurers?

Well, we start by making smart demands. Then we incentivize action. And finally, we had a spoonful of blackmail that I like to think of as a friendly nudge.

When we set out to solve the issues of the world, we might want too much at once, the end of poverty,

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