Conservative think tank launches anti-ESG initiative (2022)
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The Heritage Foundation, one of the oldest conservative think tanks in Washington, D.C., decided to launch an initiative to fight back against ESG investing. The move was announced on September 1, 2022:[1]
"The Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank, has launched a campaign against economic policies known as ESG that it says are being used by the Left as a social credit score to force businesses and financial institutions to adopt progressive ideologies across the globe.
"'Under ESG, traditional American energy like oil and gas is punished and the Left’s ‘woke’ cultural agenda is implemented from the boardroom down to the factory floor,' the website for the new Heritage Foundation program, named ESG Hurts, states. 'This agenda is being pushed by green activists, woke culture warriors, global elites, and the big businesses they control.'
"Andrew Olivastro, vice president for outreach at Heritage Foundation, told Fox News Digital that ESG is a 'direct assault on the free market economy' due to its incompatibility with self-governance.
"'What you see is today's political left is decidedly intolerant and can not stand a people that can self govern because it reduces their power and control,' Olivastro said. 'So ESG can be seen as this grand umbrella for what is often celebrated as public private partnerships but it's really the nexus of the administrative state and the managerial class.'…
"The Heritage Foundation argues that Americans can protect the environment without implementing the negative toll that ESG policies bring.
"'Americans should know that #ESG is not at all the same thing as environmental stewardship,' Heritage Foundation President Kevin Roberts tweeted Wednesday. 'We can be morally upright stewards of nature, of what God has given us, while realizing that ESG actually gets in the way of human flourishing.'…
"Olivastro told Fox News Digital that ESG represents a push by the Left to 'weaponize capital' in order to 'change the way corporate America operates.'
"'CEOs who let their businesses be treated as vessels for left wing activism and cultural indoctrination deserve our scrutiny and our ridicule,' Olivastro said.”
See also
- Environmental, social, and corporate governance (ESG)
- Economy and Society: Ballotpedia's ESG newsletter
External links
Footnotes
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