Heading into the hotly contested midterm elections, the American political right has a new rallying cry: Down with ESG.
Conservatives have identified the popular investing strategy, which accounts for environmental, social and governance risks, as part of a broader narrative about left-wing overreach and “ wokeness” run amok. Utah Treasurer Marlo Oaks calls it “corporate cancel culture.” Behind the rhetoric lie policies designed to sap the momentum of one of Wall Street’s most successful initiatives in recent years, now worth $35 trillion globally. If it works, it will firmly ensconce ESG in the culture wars, galvanize voters and weaken the resolve of big asset managers to act on climate change and other big, societal issues.
West Virginians are already all too familiar with ESG, according to state treasurer Riley Moore. He’s preparing a list of banks that, he says, will lose the state’s business unless they declare they aren’t boycotting the coal industry and other fossil fuels. “Certainly ‘woke capitalism’ is something they are very familiar with,” he said. “We’re facing threats from that in my state, right now.”
The attacks on ESG escalated last week when former Vice President Mike Pence made the strategy a key theme in an energy-policy speech in Houston. A potential candidate for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination, Pence said large investment firms are pushing a “radical ESG agenda” and took aim at BlackRock Inc., whose Chief Executive Officer Larry Fink is a champion of sustainable investing, and others who have pressed for progress on climate change.
Pence added to the growing public attacks on ESG. On Wednesday, Tesla Inc. founder and libertarian influencer Elon Musk told his 94 million Twitter followers that “ ESG is a scam,” building on a March tweet in which he labeled the practice “the Devil incarnate.” Republican megadonor Peter Thiel called ESG a “hate factory for naming enemies” in a speech at a Bitcoin conference in April, and the Twitter bio of right-wing pundit Glenn Beck now reads, “Against ESG before it was cool.”
With gas prices rising and energy a key factor in Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, it’s becoming easier for Republicans to tie ESG to pocketbook issues of their constituents. Just as Critical Race Theory grew from a catchall for parents unhappy or worried about what their children were learning in public schools to successful efforts to seize control of local school boards, ESG opponents see an opportunity to aim voters’ fears of inflation at the finance industry’s efforts to combat global warming and other social ills.
It’s also a new front in a longstanding battle against further restrictions on fossil-fuel industries, which give generously to Republican party candidates, and more corporate accountability. At the state level, Republican governors and other officials are finding new ways to block major Wall Street firms from state business, including managing pension funds and bond issues, if they apply ESG principles to other parts of their portfolios.
Nationally, the broadsides against ESG bolster calls to abandon, or at least relax, environmental standards in favor of “energy independence.” It’s also a partisan issue at the US Securities and Exchange Commission, which is trying to require companies to report on their greenhouse gas emissions. In a virtual meeting on the plan in March, the agency’s only Republican commissioner, Hester Peirce, turned off her camera in protest, saying that she was trying to reduce her carbon footprint.
Republicans are increasingly using banks and “woke” companies as cudgels for their base voters, said Reed Galen, a co-founder of the anti-Trump group, The Lincoln Project. “If you’re taking on a company who has environmental and social justice goals, you don't have to explain ESG to the voters. All you have to do is say ‘woke corporation.’”
In the past few years, as the world became more aware of the risks posed by global warming and social unrest, financial firms have rushed to offer investments that promise to account for those risks — and maybe even minimize them. With an ESG slant on everything from loans to complex derivatives, assets are set to balloon to $50 trillion worldwide by 2025, according to estimates from Bloomberg Intelligence.
In the US, a big proportion of that is via public pension funds, which are overseen by state or local officials, or in private sector retirement plans, and receive preferential tax treatment. In response to new federal rules that would allow pension funds to consider ESG alongside traditional fiduciary factors in making investing decisions, almost two dozen states registered their objection, saying the rules would allow investments to be guided by “social causes and corporate goals, even if it adversely affects the return to the employee.”
Those states are increasingly considering legislative action. State lawmakers and treasurers have for years been concerned that politically motivated investing strategies reduce long-term profits, said Jonathan Williams, chief economist at the American Legislative Exchange Council. The conservative group, which writes model legislation, is looking to prevent public pensions from making investments using ESG.
Credit ratings agency S&P Global Inc. also has come under fire for using ESG information to evaluate municipal debt. In West Virginia, Moore joined several state treasurers last month to demand the ratings agency drop ESG factors from its rating system. His state got a negative social score and a moderately negative environmental score, signaling higher risk than the vast majority of states, which are rated neutral.