ESG: We Respectfully Dissent

Join Ed and Ron for a deep dive on the problems with Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) standards, or lack thereof. ESG has replaced the Triple Bottom Line and began to receive global attention due to the United Nations Principles for Responsible Investment (PRI) report, and is seen as a means for advancing the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). The SEC is now proposing regulations that will force public companies to disclose environmental risk factors, at tremendous cost. What could go wrong? Quite a lot. Metrics for ESG are completely subjective, nor grounded in empirical reality as demonstrated when three different ESG watchdogs rated Tesla: Best, Worst, and Middling. How helpful. If an oil company is rated, it is automatically Worst (unless it is Gazprom in Russia, which received a very high ESG rating before the Ukraine invasion), even though oil companies saves countless lives every single day. For all these reasons and more, we dissent from the hokum being pushed by advocates of ESG.