Russ Greene of Stand Together reviews former BlackRock executive Terrence Keeley’s book, Sustainable:

Keeley notes, “[ESG-motivated] shortsightedness in Europe and the United States meant revenues for Russia’s state-owned energy champions and war funds for Putin’s decimation of Ukrainian cities and citizens.” Chevron boosted its ESG credentials by selling 75 percent of its South African assets to China’s Sinopec. Surely that will save the planet. As Steven Soukup joked, it’s too bad “Suicide of the West” is already taken as a book title.
Confronting ESG’s manifest failure, Keeley suggests the “1.6 Percent ‘Solution.’” It involves annually dedicating 1.6 percent of the $220 trillion controlled by the largest investors to impact investing, while the rest is traditionally managed. The percentage is intended to yield the $3.5 trillion per year of private money supposedly needed to achieve net-zero carbon emissions by 2050. Such a private, delineated effort would surely be preferable to trying to reengineer the whole world economy to ESG specifications. So long as the U.S. government is doing so much to entrench the current ESG paradigm, however, innovative approaches such as Keeley’s may stand little chance of success.
In the end, the readers, even those who may disagree with some of Keeley’s conclusions, should be thankful Keeley published a powerful and knowledgeable critique of ESG so soon after leaving BlackRock. And Larry Fink’s foreword suggests that concerns with ESG may not be limited only to former BlackRock executives.

David Bahnsen talks to Art Laffer on the latest episode of Capital Record. Listen here, or wherever you get your podcasts.