Illegal ESG Collusion Behind Decarbonization Efforts
In mid-June, the U.S. House of Representatives Judiciary Committee released an interim report describing collusion between radical environmental groups, progressive activists, and corporate interests, especially in the financial sector, to impose Environment, Social, and Governance goals on the American people. The Judiciary committee is, in part, charged with the “[p]rotection of trade and commerce against unlawful restraints and monopolies.” This includes protecting against collusion which reduces competition, limits consumer choice, and increases prices, in the case at hand, through efforts to decarbonize the economy, in pursuit of environmental and environmental justice demands.
Doctrinaire, elitist adherents of ESG goals view capitalism is a sin against the environment that must be restrained through social engineering to ensure that the social, environmental, and ethical ends they believe are required by a social justice, are adopted and enforced across society. Evidence shows that there is no climate crisis, but ESG pushers use the alleged threat of catastrophic climate change to push progressive ends.
The Heartland Institute was well ahead of the curve in exposing the dangers ESG poses to freedom and economic progress, with our April 2023 study exploring the ways different special interests are colluding to universalize ESG standards – Congress is finally catching up.
Congress used the power of the subpoena to force recalcitrant ESG proponents (which it labels the “climate cartel”) to give up documents detailing their collaborations to promote ESG, and concluded based on the documentation that the various groups are illegally colluding against the interest of the American people by, for example, “forcing companies to slash output of products and services that are critical to Americans’ daily lives.”
The groups colluding, include (not an exhaustive list), per the report:
- Climate Action 100+, the Net Zero Asset Managers initiative, and the Glasgow Financial Alliance for Net Zero (GFANZ);
- blue state pension funds like the California Public Employees’ Retirement System
- (CalPERS);
- radical environmental non-profit organizations like Ceres;
- stockholder engagement service providers like As You Sow;
- activist investors like Arjuna Capital, LLC (Arjuna), Trillium Asset Management,
- LLC, Engine No. 1 LP, and Aviva Investors Americas, LLC, which “acquire a minimal ownership stake . . . to stop climate change, not to make a financial profit;”
- the “Big Three” asset managers BlackRock, Inc. (BlackRock), State Street Global Advisors (State Street), and The Vanguard Group, Inc. (Vanguard), who together own 21.9% and vote 24.9% of the shares of the Standard and Poor’s (S&P) 500;
- and the foreign-owned proxy advisory duopoly of Institutional Shareholder Services Inc. (ISS) and Glass, Lewis & Co. (Glass Lewis), which have a combined 90% market share and advise mutual funds controlling more than $27 trillion in assets.
The report says the climate cartel has, among other things:
- [D]eclared war on the American way of life [by] … waging “a Global World War” for net zero against disfavored American companies, including those in the fossil fuel, aviation, and farming industries that allow Americans to drive, fly, and eat. It has described Climate Action 100+ as “the global Navy,” and compared Ceres’s efforts to “the Army ground troops” and “an ‘air cover’ strategic and silent bombing campaign by a newly funded division of the Air Force.”
- The climate cartel has agreed to force corporations to “decarbonize.” Members of groups like Climate Action 100+ expressly commit to engage “with the companies in which [they] invest” to make them reach “net zero [greenhouse gas (GHG)] emissions by 2050” by disclosing their carbon emissions, reducing their carbon emissions, and adopting enforcement mechanisms to strengthen these commitments.
- The climate cartel “[r]amp up” and “[e]scalate” pressure against corporations on the “wrong side of climate history.” The climate cartel is “willing to go to the top rung” by filing shareholder resolutions, voting against management, and “replac[ing] board members” with those of its own choosing.
- The climate cartel seeks to “keep fossil fuels in the ground,” raising prices and reducing output for American consumers.
In short, this exhaustively referenced report uses the climate cartel’s own documents and independent research to expose how these groups are colluding through pressure tactics and political influence (politicians and bureaucrats), to force companies to adopt ESG goals that further their social and political aims, to the detriment of many of the companies themselves, consumers, and the general public.
The report concludes:
The Committee’s ongoing investigation into collusion between left-wing activists and major financial institutions has revealed that a climate cartel is working to decarbonize the U.S. economy—with disastrous implications for American consumers. The climate cartel has declared war on our way of life, escalating its attacks on free markets and demanding that companies slash output of the critical products and services that allow Americans to drive, fly, and eat.
The Biden Administration has failed to act upon the climate cartel’s apparent violations of longstanding U.S. antitrust law.
For a government report, it is relatively short, and like The Heartland Institute’s report before it, well worth reading in full. As grim a picture as the Judiciary Committee paints of the collusion to decarbonize the world in pursuit of ESG, I think it actually understates the danger to humanity’s short-term and long-term well-being. ESG is a recipe for equality in squalor—with the exception of the elites in charge of the climate cartel—with poverty and premature death being the end result.
Sources: U.S. House Judiciary Committee;
Greenie Watch
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