ESG marketing materials that contain many errors

This is my reply to a fund company executive who expressed concern about some of the language I used in a prior email.

Sure thing. I too am concerned about the narrative – the narrative I’m reading in company materials. I’m referencing the aspects of the company's ESG-related marketing materials that are false. For example, I’ll use this opportunity to provide some comments on the leaflet titled “Opportunities in ESG-oriented solutions” (Q1 2022) which is really only a single page, which I read very deliberately and highlighted things I believe are false, biased or misleading. I note that while I consider myself a lay-expert in the science and economics of the relevant subjects, if it is this easy for me to find so many problems then imagine what professionals whose lives are dedicated to truth in their specialties would find. I think they would mostly identify the same issues but would have much more in-depth critiques at the tip of their tongues. In my case I can point to aspects of reality that prove I am right, or point to the literature that backs me up, but I am not here providing an in-depth and fully referenced commentary. If there is any focused aspect of this that you would care to explore in depth and with full references I can do so. Ask me anything and demand that I back it up: this is the type of due diligence I expect an investment management company to do.

While it is true the United Nations has declared climate change the greatest threat that modern humanity has ever faced, this is both absurd and evidence shows is false. Since deaths from extreme climate events are not increasing, not decreasing but have actually decreased 98% in the last century, thanks to the abundant energy from fossil fuels that has enabled humanity to be more resilient, better prepared, and able to adapt to the naturally dangerous climate. Deaths are 50X lower and this is extraordinarily good news that is completely ignored in IPCC reports. When a source that purports to provide comprehensive data does not even acknowledge how much things have improved in the last century, how can we trust anything they say about the future. I also note that the UN is a political body, as is the IPCC, and has political goals.

1. “Inequality continues to plague the world” – yes, but primarily in countries that are energy-starved. Inequality falls with the rising wealth of a country. The only type of equality that matters is equality before the law and this is solved by adopting capitalism, not the socialist prescriptions of the UN and environmentalists. There is evidence that damage from dictatorial covid policies was greater than the disease itself and certainly the proper policy response to disease can never be fascism, but freedom to think. Racial equality in the world has never been better and the solution is again freedom through capitalism (the system of individual rights protection), not coercive policies like ESG, which are self-contradictory.
2. “…ticking clock in the fight to limit the damages of climate change…” There is no evidence for any ticking clock except the one that is progressively eroding the rights of individuals to make their own choices in pursuit of improving their lives. As I have started to show you, the science literature does not show an increase in extreme weather events, an unnatural rise in global temperature or sea levels, and per above even if something was happening the overall results have been massively beneficial for humanity.
3. Clean energy. If this is used to refer to wind and solar it is a complete falsehood. Wind and solar only appear cleaner at the point of electricity production but this ignores the industrial-scale production of the machines used to create the electricity and also ignores their full grid-integration effects. Because wind and solar machines are mineral-based, they require massive mining projects that consume vast energy, create incredible amounts of waste products (many of them toxic), and it happens that much of the mineral exploitation happens in third-world or dictatorship countries where environmental and labour conditions are far inferior to the western world. We are effectively outsourcing our pollution to such countries while making ourselves vulnerable to national security issues as countries like China and Russia gain greater control of our supply chains. Further, since wind and solar are intermittent and never actually replace reliable energy sources, to the degree they are adopted energy gets more expensive and thus human life is harmed.
4. “What is certain is that the transition to a net-zero economy will require ground-breaking innovation and significant investment.” This quote infers correctly that there is as yet no technology that can replace the virtues of fossil fuel energy. I constantly read about supposedly ground-breaking ideas, yet not one of them has proven it can be scaled to an industrial level at an economic price. Of all the energy discoveries of the last century, the only one that proved itself was nuclear, but then it became exponentially more expensive as environmentalists attacked it and succeeded in grinding nuclear progress to a halt in the Western world. Further, the very concept of net zero is absurd since there is no evidence such a thing is desirable, never mind feasible without destroying civilization.
5. “…benefit a global network of stakeholders…” Who are the stakeholders? The investors who provide the capital are the ones whose interests must be above all else when it comes to the management of capital. As Adam Smith identified in 1776 a free market leads to the greatest human prosperity and the most use of human reasoning power. A free market is the only system that voluntarily aligns the interests of investors, industrialists, businesses, customers and suppliers and the communities they live in - actual stakeholders. All other systems require forms of coercion and lead to cronyism, rent-seeking, political inequality and worse life.
6. “…gained access to a financing tool…” Financing was already available for projects that make economic sense. What ESG demands is financing for projects that do NOT make as much sense to rational investors. What is meant by such financing is thus non-financial goals, namely political goals, and the political ideas behind these goals are anti-human at root.

The second page of the leaflet is mostly a graphic, but the link given as the ONLY resource for the leaflet is filled with errors

1. "Climate change.... acute effects on food security, natural resources and migration patterns fuelling tensions across countries and regions."  In fact, food production is linked to access to energy - everywhere energy production grows so does wealth and food security. Thanks to abundant, cheap, reliable energy from fossil fuels, humanity has mastered the naturally dangerous climate and can produce more food than it can use if the country adopts capitalism/freedom. Natural resource supply is also a function of energy and freedom and supply has expanded faster than demand - the concept of peak oil, another false environmentalist prediction, was disproven less than twenty years ago.
2. Attenborough's quote is false to the objective observer since human safety, health, education, equality before the law and every single measure of human prosperity has increased exponentially, in line with the energy produced from fossil fuels, which powers all the machines that freed man from the limitations of physical labour and opened up myriad new capabilities never dreamed of. In a world where there are so many ways to improve the human condition inexpensively, climate change is far, far down the list.
3. "While the world will never return to the stable climate that gave birth to civilization." This is false - the climate has always been very dangerous for humans and has only become safe in the last 100 years, with a 98% drop in climate-related deaths.
4. He calls for global cooperation but his true meaning is revealed when he calls for the use of government force on an unprecedented scale to oppose the rational decisions of their citizens. If people wanted to do something then coercion would not be needed.
5. "Indeed, where climate change dries up rivers, reduces harvests, destroys critical infrastructure and displaces communities, it exacerbates the risks of conflict." Access to energy and wealth is the solution to all this, not the destruction of freedom and abundant cheap energy. There is no evidence for significant human contributions to the rivers, crops and infrastructure he references – these claims are shown as false by the literature.
6. There is much more that is wrong with the text found in the link but the few examples above illustrate the anti-human, anti-reason and anti-freedom bias in the text.