Only about 150 companies on the S&P 500 index are aligned with ESG emissions reductions. In order to avoid doing business with every company that does not meet ESG standards, one would have to divest or skip over 350 companies on the index.
The environment, social and governance (ESG) investing movement has faced a lot of criticism over the past couple years for undermining fiduciary responsibility and pushing progressive agendas through an undemocratic process.
At the Energy Future Forum presented by RealClearEnergy Wednesday, Terrence Keeley, author and former senior advisor at Blackrock, argued that ESG is also misallocating resources and doing nothing for the environment it claims to protect.
For “those who are ‘team humanity’ and ‘team abundance,’ it’s not climate deniers that are the problem. Our problem is the tradeoff denier — those who do not see any tradeoffs in these decisions,” Keeley said.
Blackrock has been a leader in the ESG movement, and CEO Larry Fink has been one of its most outspoken promoters.
The forum featured over a dozen experts in a variety of fields speaking on the intersection of technology, money and policy.
In his welcome talk, David DesRosiers, president of RealClear Foundation, said that what the world is doing in terms of energy policy to address the problem of climate change hasn’t been tested on a representative sample to prove its costs and benefits.
“What we’re doing is being tested instead on the fly and at scale. What could possibly go wrong with a command and control reordering of the entire global economy? I think a lot,” DesRosiers said.
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