Failure of fundamental fiduciary duties to traders is simply the tip of ESG fraud iceberg
Paul Driessen
Warning: Your retirement fund might have been Shanghaied by BlackRock or different Wall Avenue asset managers who’ve unilaterally determined that the tens of trillions of {dollars} of different individuals’s cash they management ought to be used to advance political causes they favor – to “make the world a greater place.”
As most individuals know, ESG stands for Environmental safety, Social justice, and Governance of company and societal affairs. They’re all noble-sounding causes. Nonetheless, below ESG they’re centered round progressive, woke agendas, with prevention of “artifical local weather cataclysms” uppermost. Fund property are used to drive “internet zero” local weather agendas and punish or de-fund fossil gasoline firms.
That slender focus creates severe issues. These trillions of {dollars} are imagined to be passively invested in index and different funds, below fiduciary obligations to safe most returns in help of state, native, company and private retirement and funding accounts. Beneath ESG, nevertheless, sturdy returns are too usually sacrificed to serve politicized agendas, usually in collusion with governments, activists and different monetary establishments, and thus additionally in violation of antitrust legal guidelines and fundamental moral rules.
That’s why Asset supervisor Vanguard not too long ago left the UN-sponsored “Glasgow Monetary Alliance for Internet Zero.” In the meantime, Arizona, Florida, Kentucky, Louisiana, Missouri, North Carolina, Texas, West Virginia and different states are pulling tens of billions of {dollars} out of BlackRock, State Avenue and different Wall Avenue asset administration corporations, for violating fiduciary duties. It’s simply the tip of the fraud iceberg.
Woke ESG practitioners additionally make use of slender ES&G definitions to virtue-signal, hold forth and impose prescriptive agendas with little or no regard for the implications. When the “existential menace of artifical local weather change” is the first arbiter, huge issues related to changing fossil fuels with “clear renewable power” are merely ignored, suppressed and censored out of the evaluation.
Individuals and planet realities completely must be included in any moral ESG evaluation.
Environmental safety. Quite than trying solely on the temperatures, storms, droughts, rising seas and different environmental prices that local weather fashions falsely blame on fossil gasoline emissions – any correct and sincere ESG scorecard should additionally assess the large ecological impacts from wind-solar-battery (WSB) power programs that can supposedly substitute oil, gasoline and coal.
WSB programs and related transmission strains don’t seem spontaneously, by way of Supplies Acquisition for World Industrial Change (MAGIC). They require mining on unprecedented scales. President Biden’s preliminary batch of offshore wind generators alone would require 110,000 tons of copper, refined from 25,000,000 tons of ore, after eradicating 40,000,000 tons of overburden – plus tens of millions of tons of iron, manganese, aluminum, nickel, concrete, plastics and different supplies … from billions of tons of ores.
Changing all U.S. coal and gasoline electrical energy era with WSB – plus gasoline autos and gasoline stoves and furnaces – would require tens of 1000’s of wind generators, billions of photo voltaic panels, billions of battery modules for autos and backup electrical energy storage, and 1000’s of miles of recent transmission strains. Has BlackRock calculated the ore physique and mining necessities for that? For a international transition?
All these generators, panels, modules, transmission strains, mines, processing vegetation and factories must be situated someplace. Have the ESG potentates decided in whose backyards they’ll go? (Most likely not Larry Fink’s or John Kerry’s.) Have they assessed the impacts on surroundings, habitats and wildlife? the air and water air pollution from the mines and different operations? the chance that endangered proper whales could be pushed to extinction by wind turbine installations off the U.S. Atlantic Coast?
Do all these WSB mines, foundries, factories and impacts even get (clearly unfavorable) ESG scores?
Social justice. ESG theology holds that the poor and folks of shade endure most from local weather change. In actuality, they profit most from having plentiful, dependable, reasonably priced fuels and electrical energy – for vehicles, jobs, fashionable properties, cooking, warmth and air con. The truth is, the poor and folks of shade are usually not faring all that effectively in Britain and Europe, the place the “transition to inexperienced power” is effectively underway.
Over seven million British households have fallen into “gasoline poverty” this winter, and particular “heat rooms” have been set as much as assist individuals survive freezing climate. Current headlines warn that Britain might have nationwide blackouts and intensive manufacturing unit shutdowns and layoffs this winter. In Germany, households are stocking up on candles, in order that they will no less than learn whereas they shiver jobless of their properties.
Persons are dying – who would have survived diseases and preexisting well being situations in the event that they hadn’t been so impoverished, chilly and malnourished. Within the USA, 14% of seniors have skipped meals and 10% delayed or canceled medical procedures or rationed prescription drugs in 2022 due to sharply rising power, meals and different costs. Sincere ESG scores would issue all this in, as effectively.
Growing international locations desperately want reliable, reasonably priced electrical energy to create jobs, raise households out of poverty, modernize properties, colleges and hospitals, present clear water, and substitute wooden and animal dung for cooking and heating. Even right now, tens of millions of fogeys and kids die from respiratory and intestinal illnesses which can be unparalleled in rich international locations, as a result of they don’t have electrical energy.
ESG scoring ignores all of this, actively stymies funding in fossil gasoline energy vegetation in African and different international locations, and makes an attempt to restrict financing to wind and photo voltaic power and no matter jobs and residing requirements this restricted, weather-dependent power can help. That’s hardly moral or socially accountable.
Governance of company and societal affairs. ESG activists and monetary establishments coopt and collude with company, federal, state and native governments to serve the local weather disaster agenda, and drive funding out of fossil gasoline endeavors and into “renewable” power. In essence, that is fascism, an financial system by which authorities doesn’t personal the technique of manufacturing, however controls them via legal guidelines, insurance policies and preparations with monetary establishments, firms, activists, media and academia.
Equally troublesome, ESG inevitably ends in fashionable industrialized nations de-developing, as their factories and jobs migrate to China, India and different international locations that aren’t obligated below local weather agreements to scale back their coal and pure gasoline use anytime quickly, don’t have any intention of doing so, and are burning report quantities of coal to make sure dependable and reasonably priced electrical energy.
This additionally raises disturbing nationwide safety issues, as america and its allies turn into ever extra depending on Chinese language factories and Chinese language managed provide chains for wind, photo voltaic, battery, transformer, communication, computing, healthcare and even protection/weaponry uncooked supplies and applied sciences.
ESG advocates decrease these issues, whilst they ignore how hovering uncooked materials calls for below Internet Zero agendas would set off skyrocketing costs for more and more scarce commodities, and thus imperil the power infrastructures and economies of countries throughout the globe.
The phrases rip-off and fraud come to thoughts. However a fair higher time period has its origins in China – Shanghaied: utilizing trickery, intimidation or violence to pressure somebody to serve your navy … or firm. On this case, ESG pressures are forcing traders, firms and international locations to serve the curiosity of China’s authorities and company sectors, which management provide chains and manufacturing for applied sciences of each description, particularly within the power sector. ESG scorecards pay no consideration to this, both.
The truth is, BlackRock, State Avenue, different ESG stalwarts, and their authorities and environmentalist allies appear intent on destroying our planet with “inexperienced” power, to put it aside from fossil gasoline calamities that exist in local weather fashions and fevered imaginations (as in “Earth has a fever”) … however not within the Actual World.
This Christmas or Hanukkah, let’s all give our mates, relations and monetary establishments the reward of sensible, sincere, correct and insightful Environmental, Social and Governance rules.
Paul Driessen is senior coverage advisor for the Committee For A Constructive Tomorrow (www.CFACT.org) and creator of books and articles on power, environmental and human rights points.
