ESG poses as a moral and financially savvy movement. In reality it is an immoral and financially ruinous movement that is destroying the free world's ability to produce low-cost, reliable energy. This prevents poor countries from developing and threatens America's security.

🧵
Over the last 5-10 years, "ESG"--standing for Environmental Social Governance--has gone from an acronym that virtually no one knew or cared about, to a cultishly-embraced top priority of financial regulators, markets, and institutions around the world.
The preposterous financial pretense of "ESG investing" is that the promoters of it have so accurately identified universal norms of long-term value creation--Environmental norms, Social norms, and Governance norms--that imposing those norms on every company is justified.
In reality, ESG was a movement cooked up at the UN--not exactly a leading expert in profitable investment--to impose moral and political agendas, largely left-wing ones, on institutions that would not adopt them if left to their own devices.
The number one practical policy advocated by the ESG movement today is: divest from fossil fuels in every way possible, and associate yourself with "renewable" solar and wind in every way possible. This policy is helping destroy energy production around the world.
Divesting from fossil fuels is immoral because:

1. The world needs much more energy.
2. Fossil fuels are the only way to provide most of that energy for the foreseeable future.
3. Any problems associated with CO2 pale in comparison to problems of energy deprivation.
The world needs much more energy

Low-cost, reliable energy enables human beings to use modern machines to be productive and prosperous. Yet 3B people still use less electricity than a typical American refrigerator. 2.6B are still using wood or dung for heating and cooking.
Fossil fuels are indispensable

Only fossil fuels provide low-cost, reliable, versatile, global-scale energy. Unreliable solar/wind can't come close. That's why fossil fuels continue to grow in the developing world; China and India have hundreds of coal plants in development.
CO2 levels matter much less than energy availability, 1

CO2 emissions have contributed to the warming of the last 170 years, but that warming has been minor and masterable—1 degree C, mostly in cold parts of the world. And life on Earth thrived when CO2 levels were >5X today's.
CO2 levels matter much less than energy availability, 2

Fossil fuels have made climate far safer by powering a highly resilient civilization. That's why climate disaster deaths—from extreme temps, droughts, wildfires, storms, and floods—have decreased 98% over the last century.
A moral financial movement would eagerly seek to to increase capital for all cost-effective energy, including fossil fuels. Instead, ESG is starving cost-effective energy of capital by pressuring companies to divest themselves of the fossil fuels the world desperately needs.
The ESG movement is a major cause of oil and gas investment declining dramatically, leading to unnecessarily high prices. Between 2011 and 2021, oil and gas exploration investments declined by 50%. Less investment = less supply = higher prices.
By starving cost-effective energy of capital, the ESG movement is engaging in a fundamental act of mass destruction. Energy is the industry that powers every other industry. By making energy more expensive, ESG makes everything more expensive--hurting the poorest people most.
The most egregious immorality of the ESG movement, led by Larry Fink's Blackrock, is its effort to destroy vital fossil fuel projects in poor places that desperately need them. This effort is guaranteed to perpetuate poverty.
Example of ESG poverty perpetuation: South Korea canceled new coal plants in South Africa and the Philippines after "Global investors including Blackrock...warned the South Korean utility to drop coal power projects."
Another example of ESG poverty perpetuation: "International investors are increasingly restricting support to companies involved in extracting or consuming coal, yet nearly 70% of India’s electricity comes from coal plants, and demand for power is set to rise..."
ESG poverty perpetuation is getting worse as activist "investors" with increasing influence on large financial institutions try to stop all fossil fuel projects in poor places. E.g., HSBC was attacked when it decided to fund 6 new coal power plants in Indonesia and Vietnam.
ESG defunding fossil fuel projects in the poorest parts of the world will mean: more babies die for lack of incubators and other medical equipment, more deaths from lack of water treatment plants and modern sanitation, more deaths from lack of heating and air-conditioning.
Every leading ESG institution should be called out for their genocidal policies toward the poorest parts of the world. They should be shamed for placing their own virtue-signaling above billions of actual human lives. They should lose all moral authority in the realm of energy.
The ESG movement is also an enormous threat to the security of the free world, because by depriving free countries and poor countries of low-cost, reliable energy, it furthers Communist China's ambitions to become the world's superpower using low-cost, reliable fossil fuels.
China has a clear strategy of running its economy on fossil fuels, while encouraging others to run on inferior, unreliable solar and wind — that is made using Chinese fossil fuels, which produce 85% of Chinese energy. China has 247 GW of coal plants (3 TX's worth) in development.
China dominates the mining and processing of "renewable" materials to a staggering degree. The US does little mining or processing of the needed materials, largely because of "green" regulations. Our dependence on China for "renewables" dwarfs past Mideast oil dependence.
Energy security is national security. When hostile foreign powers can meaningfully cut off our access to energy they can manipulate us politically. Examples: US appeasement of Saudi Arabia and European appeasement of Russia.
Energy security is national security, above all in wartime. War requires continuous high-energy manufacturing and continuous fueling of high-energy mobile machines such as planes and aircraft carriers. Both world wars were won by the side with the most oil, the fuel of mobility.
What does the modern ESG movement do about the danger of an energy-dominant China? Deny reality and serve as "useful idiots." Example: Larry Fink's sole mention of China in his influential letter to CEOs was to praise China's "historic commitments to achieve net zero emissions"!
The ESG divestment movement should be publicly shamed as a virtue-signaling, financially idiotic, and most importantly immoral movement that perpetuates poverty and threatens freedom. All legal pressures to adopt it should be eliminated. ESG should be boycotted wherever possible.
The anti-energy ESG movement should be replaced with a pro-energy "long-term value creation" movement. Creating sustained value for companies' owners requires a long-term perspective. But that means valuing cost-effective energy, not destroying it.
energytalkingpoints.com/positive-alter…
My full moral demolition of "ESG investing," with references. Please share this with any financial institutions you are connected with. ESG needs to be stripped of its false claim to morality to that finance can go back to fueling cost-effective energy.
alexepstein.substack.com/p/the-esg-move…

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More from @AlexEpstein

28 Dec 21
This Holiday season I have contributed $500 each to 5 crucial pro-energy organizations: @ceidotorg, @IERenergy, @envprogress, @spikedonline, and @AynRandInst.

Here’s why I’ve contributed to each one.
👇
Why I I contributed to @ceidotorg: This organization has for years been taking courageous, principled stands for energy freedom and against climate catastrophism.

One realm they excel in is the catastrophist dominated legal realm. Courageous @Chris_C_Horner does great work here.
Why I contributed to @IERenergy: This organization has a track record of principled, pro-liberty positions and disseminating extremely useful, precise information.

IER's founder, Robert Bradley Jr., “discovered” me in 2009 and told me I could be an energy thought leader.
Read 6 tweets
28 Dec 21
The movie is the comet.

#DontLookUp uses talented actors and the world's biggest distribution channel (@netflix) to promote a deadly analogy between fossil fuels and an Earth-destroying comet.

In fact, the movie's goal of rapidly eliminating fossil fuels is "the comet."

THREAD
Don't Look Up is an allegory about fossil fuels. Fossil fuels are represented by a "planet-killing" comet.

Politicians, media, and corporations refuse to "look up," see the comet, and take simple steps to stop it.

The lesson: "look up" and stop using fossil fuels, already.
Equating fossil fuels and "the comet" is backward for 3 reasons:
1. Fossil fuels' CO2 emissions are not a "planet-killing" threat.
2. Fossil fuels actually make the planet, including climate, livable.
3. Stopping fossil fuels would make the Earth unlivable for billions.
Read 13 tweets
23 Dec 21
"The Sum of All Energy Fears," @FreemanWSJ's excellent new column, explains:
1) How opposition to fossil fuels and nuclear in Europe is leading to disastrous price increases and security problems. 2) Our leaders' now-wavering commitment to emulate Europe.
wsj.com/articles/the-s…
"The people who work for U.S. voters haven’t stopped trying to enact another half a trillion dollars of spending to discourage the use of fossil fuels, but they are now signaling they understand how much we still need such fuels."
@FreemanWSJ
"Oil company executives have become openly frustrated with a Biden administration that spent months shunning the industry, only to start urging in recent weeks that it produce more oil to alleviate rising gasoline prices."
@FreemanWSJ
Read 4 tweets
20 Dec 21
Build Back Better supporters are claiming that @Sen_JoeManchin has destroyed our country's future by opposing BBB.

In fact, he has *protected* our country's future by preventing an unprecedented destruction of our energy industry--the industry that powers every other industry.🧵
Here's why Build Back Better's goal of 80% "clean electricity" by 2030 would mean going from 12% unreliable solar+wind to a catastrophic 50% solar+wind in 8 years.
alexepstein.substack.com/p/talking-poin…
Here's why Build Back Better's 10-year extension and increase of solar and wind subsidies would drive more and more reliable power plants off the grid, lead to skyrocketing prices and frequent blackouts.
alexepstein.substack.com/p/talking-poin…
Read 6 tweets
14 Dec 21
The media and government are portraying a tragic tornado as a symptom of unprecedented climate disaster that eliminating fossil fuels will save us from—even though there is no tornado trend, and we have achieved unprecedented safety from climate thanks to fossil fuels.

THREAD
Is the recent, deadly tornado in Kentucky a symptom of unprecedented climate disaster? The only scientific way to answer this question is to look for long-term trends in dangers from storms and other climate disasters. And if we do, we find that storm deaths are declining.
Has global warming been causing a disastrous increase in tornado frequency or intensity? Here's the data for the continental US, the most tornado-prone area on the planet, since the advent of comprehensive doppler-radar. There is no trend in tornado frequency or intensity.
Read 18 tweets
8 Dec 21
Dear @Sen_JoeManchin,

The "Build Back Better" legislation you are considering will be an unmitigated disaster for the West Virginia energy industry and economy.

No handful of compromises will change this.

Any vote other than no will do irreparable damage to your state.

THREAD
As an energy expert and concerned citizen, I am writing you because I believe you are our greatest hope of stopping the worst energy legislation in US history, which will especially harm your state of West Virginia: the “Build Back Better” reconciliation bill.
According to press reports and insiders, you are in active negotiations to change or remove several provisions of BBB that you are concerned will be particularly harmful to West Virginia. But no compromise is possible, because BBB is through-and-through destructive to your state.
Read 27 tweets

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