This will be a piece that will most likely anger some people. Others will feel validated, seen, and heard. This article will be about the so-called “ESG” movement, which, for those unaware, stands for “Environmental, Social, and Governance.”
The origins of the ESG movement have roots within the UN’s Agenda 2030. The basic concept being that corporations need to be held accountable for their “personal” decisions, namely, when it comes to:
#1) Governance: How the company is run by its c-suite executives and upper management;
#2) Social: How the company treats (un)related social issues, such as gender, ethnic origin, or biological sex;
#3) Environmental: How the company approaches environmental factors (un)related to their business
From a purely altruistic standpoint, this might sound like a good idea, in theory. However, in practice, this is exceedingly dangerous.
I am not a supporter of corporations having unchecked power, but I also do not believe that government or anyone else, has any right to tell a particular corporation HOW it is to run its business when it comes to arbitrary, non-business-related subjects such as ethnic origin or gender.
Let me just clarify that last sentence for you. IF a company, say a pharmaceutical manufacturer that produces synthetic female hormones, such as estrogen, has a male CEO, it makes no fundamental difference in how the company is run from the top-down. Hiring a female CEO won’t change the nature of the company, it only changes the figurehead, and, for public corporations, there are typically boards of directors and shareholders that the C-suite must answer to, at the end of the day.
Having female CEOs does not absolve the military industrial complex of responsibility for their actions. Having a trans CEO does not make a company inherently better or worse than any other.
The same applies to a company’s corporate approach to environmental issues. To be completely clear, I do not believe that a corporation should be allowed to haphazardly cause damage to the environment, within which it operates. If a chemical or energy company dumps its waste products into a lake, those companies harm the environment, and should be regulated in such a way to the point where they do not carry out those actions.
Demanding absolute adherence to an unofficial, nonbinding concept as ESG is dangerous to the freedom that is afforded to people working within corporations. The average worker for a company like Amazon, has very little impact on anything. The corporation, from the top-down, has all the power and decision-making ability to decide what its policies are, whether they be environmental, social, or governance-related.
The ESG movement is a cult, hell-bent on destroying the petroleum industry. While I don’t disagree that the petroleum industry has some absolutely despicable policies, especially when it comes to their environmental impact, I do not believe that some un-elected, half-baked corporate stooge has any right to tell a company that they can or cannot do something in order to be “in compliance” with these arbitrary standards.