(Presidentialwire.com)- Communist-style social credit score, in the form of an Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) score, is finally being challenged as states Louisiana and Missouri liquidated their investment in Wall Street’s Blackrock, according to the Daily Caller. Louisiana is reportedly pulling out a $794 million investment in the company and Missouri is following by putting an end to its $300 million account with the firm.
The move comes as the interests of the financial elite are finally recognized as being at odds with the interests of everyday Americans. The investments being pursued by financial giants like Blackrock are being considered risky and a threat to Americans’ way of life.
“Your blatant anti-fossil fuel policies would destroy Louisiana’s economy,” State Treasurer John Schroder wrote in an Oct. 5 letter to BlackRock CEO Larry Fink, explaining his decision to withdraw the state’s investment. “This divestment is necessary to protect Louisiana from actions and policies that would actively seek to hamstring our fossil-fuel sector.”
“In my opinion,” Schroder continued, “your support of ESG [Environment, Social, and Governance] investing is inconsistent with the best economic interests and values of Louisiana. I cannot support an institution that would deny our state the benefits of its most robust assets. Simply put, we cannot be party to the crippling of our own economy.”
The states’ actual stakeholders, the American people, were not getting a good deal, which led Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton and 18 other state attorney generals to send a letter to Fink ahead of the Louisiana and Missouri divestment. The letter urged the CEO to “come clean on whether it actually values our states’ most valued stakeholders, and current and future retirees, or risk losses even more significant than those risked by BlackRock’s quixotic climate agenda.”
The two states’ withdrawal could reportedly cause other states to follow suit and draw attention to the risks associated with ESG investing. Bloomberg has also reported that the ESG sector is coming under heightened regulatory scrutiny. The name of ESG has been tarnished after reports of companies selling products that are allegedly less “sustainable” than they are purported to be.
Manhattan Institute’s Mark P. Mills calls attention to the obliviousness of ESG asset managers in what he calls “immutable energy realities.” In one example, Mills compares gasoline-powered cars to electric vehicles, indicating that the reality of producing electric vehicles can be just as environmentally degrading, as the production includes mining for minerals over extracting crude oil. As the world decarbonizes, the need to increase the supply of minerals such as lithium, graphite, nickel, and rare earths would need to be increased by 4,300%, 2,500%, 1,900%, and 700%, respectively.
“ESG-style decarbonization is a fraud whereby its proponents design a system to constrain our lives, but not theirs,” says Scott Shepard, director of the National Center for Public Policy Research’s Free Enterprise Project.
“People who live in mansions and fly to Davos in private jets have no business pushing carbon restrictions that will hobble living standards and future prospects for the rest of us,” he added.
