Elon Musk has taken to Twitter to rail against the World Economic Forum’s push for improved environmental, social, and corporate governance.
On Sunday, independent journalist Michael Shellenberger began a thread addressing the WEF’s obtuse funding, a topic he had previously investigated and helped uncover by obtaining information from Twitter indicating the company’s collaboration with federal police enforcement. After learning that the divisive organization employs ESG criteria, Musk quipped, “the S in ESG stands for Satanic.”
Regarding promoting left-leaning political and social agendas, some corporate leaders sympathetic to the ESG movement make grandiose claims.
The dismal performance of ESG funds in the stock market over the previous year is often cited as evidence that the trend creates unnecessary risks to investment returns by ESG’s detractors. While the Harvard Management Company is “glad to be extensively involved in the matter of sustainability,” they have recognized that the recent $2.3 billion loss was due to fossil fuel divestment measures.
Musk, now CEO of Tesla, SpaceX, and Twitter, has been outspoken in his rejection of ESG rankings. For instance, he noted last year that oil and gas company ExxonMobil earned a good ESG score from S&P Global while Tesla, which claims a mission of mitigating climate change with electric vehicles, did not.
After carefully considering the evidence, Musk concluded that ESG is a fraud. Untrustworthy social justice warriors have wielded it as a blunt instrument.
Criminals do capitalize on investors’ wishes to support ethical firms. In the past, Elizabeth Holmes, CEO and co-founder of the bankrupt healthcare startup Theranos was considered one of the most successful female entrepreneurs in Silicon Valley history. Defunct cryptocurrency exchange FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried lost billions of dollars in client assets through his trading firm and later told a reporter that ESG had been “perverted beyond recognition,” all the while boasting that he had earned the trust of “woke Westerners” by emphasizing his “effective altruism.”
Republican leaders have stated that there is a severe threat to the ability of governments with conservative leanings to obtain money on the bond market when corporations seeking access to capital markets risk downgrades connected to cultural concerns unrelated to financial health. Investors in companies like Walmart and Lowe’s were encouraged by ESG campaigners to consider abortion-related issues before the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade.
Members of Congress have pointed fingers at the unwillingness of giant money management corporations to invest in fossil fuels for the skyrocketing price of energy. Several Republican attorneys general filed a lawsuit with the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, alleging that Vanguard should be prevented from participating in publicly traded utilities because the company’s climate efforts will increase energy prices and weaken system reliability. In reaction, the business resigned from the Net Zero Asset Managers project, whose members agreed to help their portfolio businesses decrease their net carbon emissions to zero.