This feels like a weak argument to me. At the end of the day, nearly all cash flow, good or bad, moves through banks.

And unlike speculative investing like VC or public equities, banks lend against fundamentals: cash flow, collateral, debt coverage, repayment history. Their fiduciary responsibility to deploy deposits into relatively safe, income-generating assets.

As long as a fossil fuel business is financially sound (ie the pipeline manufacturer with stable cash flow and strong collateral) it’s hard to expect a bank to categorically refuse them as a customer.

It isn't weak. For years, banks have been granting big loans to fossil fuel projects, not to green projects. There is a demonstrable bias that goes beyond fiduciary responsibility. The logic of banks is like saying that it's okay for VCs to not fund female founders because they present a fiduciary risk claiming that male founders simply are known to work out. As such, they're as strongly in favor of climate chaos as they can be.