ESG Investing? Are You Impacted?

Environmental, social, and governance is referred to as ESG. Investors use these non-financial elements to gauge the sustainability of an investment or business. Environmental elements focus on protecting the environment, social factors analyze how a firm treats its employees and the community at large, and governance factors analyze how a corporation is run.

ESG investing is a type of sustainable investing that evaluates an investment's financial returns and total effect by taking into account environmental, social, and governance aspects. The sustainability of an investment in those specific categories is measured by an investment's ESG score.

In the United States, assets managed using ESG strategies increased to $17.1 trillion at the start of 2020, according to the US SIF Foundation's 2020 trends report. This is a gain of 42%, from the $12 trillion at the start of 2018.

Sounds Good, Right?

Environmental, social, and governance (ESG) scores have come under fire from James Lindsay, author of "Race Marxism" and other books that criticize woke narratives. He claims that ESG is a tool used by "social justice warriors" to pressure corporations and by those who want to impose "one world government."

The ESG grading system was first intended as a means for investors to track the likelihood that a firm would be a strong option for investment over the long term, Lindsay explained in a recent interview with NTD's "The Nation Speaks" program.

He explained that in the early 2000s, a group of socially conscious and activist investors came up with the hypothesis that businesses with poor corporate governance, social responsibility, and environmental policies are likely to perform poorly over the long run.

According to Lindsay, the ESG idea has always been dubious, and it's not obvious whether higher rankings have actually improved the long-term profitability of participating companies.

Even worse, he claimed that over time, "social justice warriors" had "weaponized" and "hijacked" ESG scores.

He described it as a "blatant weaponization," adding that they have the power to use it as a "financial gun to the head of any firm that doesn't do what it wants them to do."

In actuality, it is simply criminal racketeering employing what appears to be a reliable measurement tool as the mechanism. Therefore, nobody is directly accountable for what amounts to a mob shakedown of corporations, he said.

Lindsay continued by arguing that there is room for misuse because the process for determining ESG scores is not transparent.

The claim made by Lindsay that ESG is part of a "broader global agenda" that aims to make the West energy-inefficient—to the benefit of nations like China—and serve as a social control mechanism is even more alarming.

The "power elite" in the West "frequently do want to control people”, he continued, "because they realize that it works to control people in China, so they want to replicate the exact same control system."

According to a recent report, BlackRock lost $1.7 trillion of its clients’ money since the beginning of the year — the largest sum ever lost by a single firm over a six-month period, according to a Wednesday report from Bloomberg analyst Marc Rubenstein.

BlackRock said in a May report outlining its "firm wide" ESG initiatives that it aims to "engage with investee companies on ESG problems to increase long-term value." In fact, Fink stated in 2017 that he wanted to shift corporate America's course toward progressive outcomes.

In reference to Blackrock's ESG score methodology, he claimed, "At Blackrock, we are pushing habits." You must enforce behavior, and if you don't enforce behavior—regardless of gender, race, or any other factor affecting the makeup of your team—you will suffer.