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Democrats push back against the ESG pushback (2023)
| Environmental, social, and corporate governance |
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| • What is ESG? • Enacted ESG legislation • Arguments for and against ESG • Opposition to ESG • Federal ESG rules • ESG legislation tracker • Economy and Society: Ballotpedia's weekly ESG newsletter |
In response to House Republicans' plans to use their new majority to investigate the ESG movement, three Democratic senators penned an op-ed accusing their GOP colleagues of overstepping. The three senators—Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.), Brian Schatz (D-Hawaii), and Martin Heinrich (D-N.M.)—also accused Republicans who oppose ESG of being anti-capitalist:
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There is a cohort of elected officials in the United States presently engaged in an anti-capitalist crusade against free-market principles. No, they are not socialists. They are congressional Republicans, and they are attempting to prevent financial institutions from allocating capital in accordance with investor preferences and risk management principles. This attempted crackdown is purely ideological in nature — it is an exercise in political pressure to force a gross government overreach into U.S. capital markets. This campaign, which should offend anyone with even a modicum of pro-market sensibilities, is being championed from within the Republican Party. Republican state lawmakers and members of Congress are attempting to stifle the growth of sustainable investing and to punish corporate efforts at climate-related financial risk management…. Elected officials should ensure that financial regulatory agencies properly account for risks in their financial stability and supervisory work. Climate change poses unambiguous risks to the financial system, and regulated financial institutions do not have the luxury of picking which risks to manage and which risks to ignore. But Republicans are engaged in an entirely different pursuit. They are attempting to bully financial institutions and regulators into ignoring market demand and market risk. Imagine elected officials telling investment firms they cannot offer large-cap or small-cap funds, or emerging market funds, or value funds — or, for that matter, sector funds with exposure to energy companies. That would be considered preposterous. It is similarly bizarre to tell asset managers they are not allowed to reflect the preferences of their investors in their investment stewardship and proxy voting, or to tell regulators that they are not allowed to consider a major source of economic and financial risk. This isn’t how the free market works. This is picking winners and losers, in this case putting a thumb on the scale in favor of the fossil fuel industry and completely disregarding the overwhelming risks that climate change poses to our economy and financial system.[1] |
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See also
- Environmental, social, and corporate governance (ESG)
- Economy and Society: Ballotpedia's ESG newsletter
External links
Footnotes
- ↑ Note: This text is quoted verbatim from the original source. Any inconsistencies are attributable to the original source.
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