From: lessgovt@gmail.com   
      
   ESG Defenders Pose as ‘Free Market’ Disciples   
   Activists and bureaucrats seek to deny capital to companies and whole   
   industries via blacklists.   
   By Steve Marshall, May 23, 2023, WSJ   
   Proponents of ESG—environmental, social and governance—investing are   
   posing as champions of the free market. Utah Attorney General Sean Reyes and I   
   testified earlier this month before the House Oversight Committee regarding   
   our continuing    
   investigations into several global financial alliances that aim to impose ESG   
   policies on American businesses and consumers in defiance of our free-market   
   economy.   
      
   Minutes into the hearing, Rep. Jamie Raskin (D., Md.) claimed that my   
   colleagues and I were “assaulting the free market” and attempting to   
   “stop the market from responding to the climate crisis.” Rep. Katie Porter   
   (D., Calif.) continued the    
   gaslighting, noting that “capitalism delivers freedom,” which “happens   
   when markets let people choose what they want.”   
      
   As Mr. Raskin and Ms. Porter surely know, the free market has resisted onerous   
   ESG mandates. That’s why sectorwide financial alliances have emerged to   
   restrict the market’s functioning and stymie consumer choice.   
      
   A company’s affinity for ESG ideology is its prerogative. Likewise, it is   
   the consumer’s choice to reward a company’s social messages with continued   
   business. Such corporate stances are often nothing more than virtue signaling.   
   This can often be a    
   costly decision, as Anheuser-Busch is learning in the wake of Bud Light’s   
   partnership with transgender activist Dylan Mulvaney.   
      
   The more sinister ESG acolytes, however, aren’t merely printing woke   
   messages on six-packs. America’s self-proclaimed “socially responsible”   
   financial institutions, which should be competing in the free market, are   
   instead joining forces with one    
   another and their global counterparts to decide which companies—and, in some   
   cases, which industries—should be permitted to continue their market   
   participation unimpeded.   
      
   Since 2017, a growing number of these financial alliances, including Climate   
   Action 100+, the Net-Zero Banking Alliance and the Venture Climate Alliance,   
   have plotted to pressure blacklisted companies into making a priority of   
   decarbonization and other    
   social goals at the behest of the United Nations, not American consumers. In   
   other words, by controlling trillions of dollars in assets, these groups   
   intend to corner the market through potentially illegal horizontal agreements   
   and force preferred social    
   and political objectives on American companies and consumers.   
      
   The Net Zero Asset Managers initiative boasts 301 signatories and $59 trillion   
   in assets under management. On its website, the group writes: “Our   
   industry’s ability to drive the transition to net zero is extremely   
   powerful. Without our industry on    
   board, the goals set out in the Paris Agreement will be difficult to meet.”   
      
   This statement doesn’t refer to a company making a business choice because   
   of consumer demand or shareholder interest. Rather, it reveals a coalition of   
   major financial-industry players that have come together to choke out certain   
   disfavored companies    
   and industries by limiting their access to capital and then pointing to this   
   manufactured obstruction as evidence that these firms are a bad investment.   
   The resulting harm to the working public—of little interest to global   
   elites—is higher energy    
   costs and fewer options across a variety of markets, including automobiles,   
   appliances and food production.   
      
   My fellow attorneys general and I have launched investigations into various   
   components of our financial system—banks, asset managers and insurers—to   
   understand better how quickly and how tightly the walls are closing in on U.S.   
   companies and    
   consumers. If truly collusive and anticompetitive behavior exists within these   
   alliances, we will take action to protect the free market. Our multifaceted   
   investigations also carry a warning—and likely some welcome relief—for   
   banks and investment    
   firms facing increased pressure to join the ranks of the climate cabal.   
      
   Opposite us in these efforts is Joe Biden, whose presidency has been an ESG   
   crusade in the crudest form. Mr. Biden is attempting to create the federal   
   government’s own version of Climate Action 100+ by imposing emissions   
   disclosures and other ESG    
   litmus tests on federal contractors without the approval of Congress. The   
   president would then have his own blacklist, useful for strong-arming   
   companies to go woke in defiance of market forces and the legislative branch.   
   Republican attorneys general    
   will continue to stand in his way.   
      
   Consumer choice and businesses’ access to funding are central to our   
   free-market system. Because ESG dogma isn’t playing well in the open market,   
   Mr. Biden and his administration’s favorite big banks and asset managers   
   want to close off certain    
   sectors of the market altogether. If they are successful, Americans will pay   
   the price, be it with tax dollars spent to finance green subsidies or simply   
   with unaffordable vehicles and power bills.   
      
   For all the bluster from House Democrats, our fight against anticompetitive   
   ESG agreements is a fight for free markets and the consumers we have a duty to   
   protect.   
      
   Mr. Marshall is attorney general of Alabama.   
      
   https://www.wsj.com/articles/esg-defenders-hide-behind-free-mark   
   t-principles-un-climate-alliances-2aa2fd65   
      
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