ESG Is Evil

October 19, 2022 by Mark W. Hendrickson

The Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) scoring system is undergoing intense scrutiny. It also has become quite a political football, with conservative governors, attorneys general, and other officials pushing back against the movement while progressive politicians argue that ESG needs to go further.

This political tug-of-war has exposed the evil essence of ESG: It is an attempt by progressives to arm-twist the leaders of investment firms controlling the allocation of over $20 trillion in investment capital away from firms disfavored by progressives, including, most notably, producers of fossil fuels.

The question arises: What gives these custodians of vast amounts of wealth the right to target certain industries for destruction by deliberately choking off their supply of financial oxygen? If such draconian steps, with vast implications for our entire society, are to be taken at all (itself a dubious proposition), those steps should be taken in the relatively open air of democratic politics rather than in the exclusive boardrooms of an unelected financial elite.

Apart from attempting to arrogate power to themselves that they do not rightly have, the perpetrators of the ESG maneuver — that is, the money-management megafirms that have been downgrading firms for the alleged sin of being in the “wrong” business — are behaving in a morally corrupt manner. They have violated their legal fiduciary responsibility to the millions of people who have trusted them with their funds so as to maximize their returns, not to transform society...........To Read More....