The evil of ESG

 Andrea Widburg:

Environment, Social, and Governance, better known as ESG, is a metric that measures whether a nation or corporation can demonstrate the maximum amount of corporate virtue-signaling.  The most striking example is Sri Lanka, the former government of which massively increased its ESG by mandating only organic fertilizer in the small nation, leading to massive inflation, famine, and the violent overthrow of its government.  ESG is bad business and, as Sri Lanka demonstrates, dangerous to human well-being.  Now Governor Ron DeSantis has announced that Florida is leading the way to stand against this utterly toxic metric.

For just one example of the mindless gobbledygook behind ESG, take a gander at this recent write-up from Kyle Peterdy at CFI, which is an accredited provider of online content for finance professionals (that is, it's teaching this crap to the next generation):

ESG is an acronym for Environmental, Social, and Governance. ESG takes the holistic view that sustainability extends beyond just environmental issues.

ESG is best characterized as a framework that helps stakeholders understand how an organization is managing risks and opportunities related to environmental, social, and governance criteria. 

While the term ESG is often used in the context of investing, stakeholders include not just the investment community but also customers, suppliers, and employees. All of them are increasingly interested in how sustainable an organization's operations are.

Blah.  Blah.  Blah.  I'm sure Mr. Peterdy is a nice man, but this is a wall of garbage words aimed at imposing every kind of leftist policy, provided it's wrapped in virtuous language, on financial and political marketplaces.

Read on and get to the key takeaway: "ESG has changed how many investment and capital allocation decisions are made."  In other words, if a corporation or country virtue-signals its green credentials, that will drive money toward it in the short term.  The problem is that, in the long term, those same virtue-signaling acts are unsustainable, and they either destroy corporate profits (wiping out investors and employees) or push countries into famine and blackout territory.

...

Florida has announced that its pension funds will not invest in any operation that uses ESG.  That is a good move and others should join them in opposing this disaster attack on commonsense. 

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