Examining ESG

For one year we have been writing to a Canadian mutual fund company executive, exchanging ideas. We hope the exec has been finding a little time to compare how the scientific and economic literature contrast sharply with the most common issue associated with ESG: the idea of a dangerous, man-made, carbon-dioxide induced global warming. Last year in the fund company's corporate ESG report almost all the shareholder proposals and engagements the company was involved with related to carbon dioxide and its consequences - astonishing considering it is the gas of life on Earth...  Our contention from the start has been that it appears no one at the company has done a proper, full-context due diligence on the facts underlying the ideas of dangerous man-made climate change, net zero, energy transition, sustainability, and similar terms. Thus, the company has, in marketing materials, product launches, and internal policies, adopted provably false ideas that in the long run can only harm the...

Imagine you are a leader for a company that manages investments or insurance products, and you have spent a bunch of money adding ESG/sustainable/responsible and the like capabilities to your stable of money managers. You also added ESG overlays to all your other management teams, paid consultants to design and implement all this and put ESG prominently in your marketing. Then, the investing public, financial advisors, and regulators started to recognize the deep errors and biases in the whole ESG movement, and found that much of the terminology you used, the claims you made, the marketing materials you created and the products you offered were firmly based on false scientific claims, false economic benefits, false social values and in fact were terribly harmful to humanity. Might some reputational, regulatory, and even legal damages follow? This blog is an effort to persuade Canadian and international investment managers to tread much more carefully before adopting ESG and similar ide...