Letter: L.L. Bean should part ways with Citibank

This holiday season, L.L. Bean and Citibank are putting coal into all of our stockings. “Citibank which services the L.L. Bean credit card, is the biggest funder of new coal projects in the world. Some of Citibank’s profits from its lucrative credit card business are helping to finance these planet-destroying projects,” writes Tom Mikulka of Third Act Maine (Letter to the editor, Dec. 5).

“Coal is the single greatest threat to civilization and all life on the planet … the dirtiest trick that governments play on their citizens is the pretense that they are working for ‘clean coal’. The trains carrying coal to power plants are death trains. Coal-fired power plants are factories of death,” wrote James Hanson, climate scientist and former director of the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies, in a 2009 column for the Guardian.

Corporations have an outsized voice in policy making. L.L. Bean could use its voice to encourage Citibank to stop investing in coal now. Better yet, L.L. Bean could cut all ties with a bank that chooses profit and power over social and environmental responsibility.

L.L. Bean and Citibank might not be literally putting coal in our stockings, but they are literally putting the toxins of burning coal into the atmosphere, and thus into our lungs and the lungs of our children. L.L. Bean should do the right thing and cut ties with Citibank.

William Rixon
Freeport