Reading an article in Wealth Professional Canada I was moved to comment.
ESG has been all the rage for several years but is based on deeply flawed and at their root anti-human principles. Consider just one issue that dominates ESG: carbon dioxide produced by fossil fuel use. Fossil fuels are used everywhere that people work to break out of energy poverty because of their unique combination of abundance, dense energy, flexibility, portability, scalability and affordability. They can be used in millions of location by billions of people and despite thirty years and trillions spend on wind and solar, they only provide 3% of world energy and fossil fuels provide 82%. The fastest growing energy in the world by gigawatts? Fossil fuels that have lifted every single developed country out of energy poverty and powered the industrial revolution.
What about side effects of carbon dioxide? CO2 is literally the gas of life, feeding the plant kingdom that in turn feeds the animal kingdom. As CO2 rises life flourishes and for the last several decades the world has been greening due to CO2 fertilization. Is the global temperature rising? Is appears to have risen slightly, by about one degree celsius since the industrial revolution, however we have only had good satellite data for forty four years and it is hard to separate the human effects from immensely powerful natural forces like solar cycles, Milankovitch cycles, cosmic ray cycles and impacts like volcanoes. Yes, cities have warmed due to the urban heat island effect but mainly they are warmer at night.
Did you know that deaths from extreme weather events have declined 98% in the last hundred years or so? Yes - FIFTY times lower. This is because with abundant energy enables humans to prepare for, recover from and be more resilient against the naturally dangerous climate.
The anti-fossil fuel component of ESG is so deeply flawed, so immoral, so anti-reason and anti-human that if any good remains within ESG it is all poisoned by association and can't be trusted. I avoid all ESG in my practice and will never be a supporter no matter how irrational the world becomes nor how popular the ESG delusion becomes. Take a close look for yourself, read widely and think carefully and in full context while eliminating bias. If you dare to you will find in ESG the rotten ideology that I have found.
