By Lena Babaeva Coradini

Interesting New York Times piece on the increasing number of banks and commercial lenders that are starting to distance their financial institutions from companies involved in risky or controversial environmental operations.

Blasting off mountaintops to reach coal in Appalachia or churning out millions of tons of carbon dioxide to extract oil from sand in Alberta are among environmentalists’ biggest industrial irritants. But they are also legal and lucrative.

For a growing number of banks, however, that does not seem to matter.

. . .

Still, banking analysts and others suggest that heated debate over climate change, water quality and other environmental considerations is forcing lenders to take a much harder — and often uncomfortable — look at where they extend credit, and to whom.