This couldn’t have happened to a nastier group of people.

Two of the world’s biggest asset managers are quitting an investor group set up to prod companies over global warming and a third is scaling back its participation, in a major setback to the ambitions of Climate Action 100+.

JPMorgan Asset Management and State Street Global Advisors both confirmed they were leaving Climate Action 100+. BlackRock, the world’s largest money manager, is pulling out as a corporate member and transferring its participation to its smaller international arm.

The departures weaken the climate group’s plan to use shareholder influence to step up pressure on polluting companies to decarbonise, because they mean that none of the world’s five largest asset managers are fully behind the effort.

Regardless of pressure from Republican politicians, Climate Action 100+ sowed the seeds of its demise when the group decided to resort to arm twisting:

SSGA said Climate Action’s latest corporate engagement requirements had gone too far. These “phase 2” requirements, announced last year, shifted from pressuring companies on climate disclosures to pushing them to actively reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

“SSGA has concluded the enhanced Climate Action 100+ phase 2 requirements for signatories are not consistent with our independent approach to proxy voting and portfolio company engagement,” SSGA said in a statement.

JPMAM said it had made a “significant investment” in its own stewardship team and corporate engagement. “Given these strengths and the evolution of its own stewardship capabilities, JPMAM has determined that it will no longer participate in Climate Action 100+ engagements.”

Tennessee’s Attorney General and a number of state agricultural officials are now engaged in legal actions hoping to spurn financial institutions to end their ESG practices. Their torts along with Climate Action 100+’s bullying were obviously enough to convince the aforementioned U.S. financial institutions to back away.

Surprisingly enough, even though ESG investing is still popular in Europe, the European Union began backing away from ESG late last year signaling that the practice there is also on the decline. BlackRock CEO will undoubtedly be upset.

All in all, this is good news. Hopefully, these events will help fall in line with the USDA’s recent, upbeat assessment that food prices are slowing and will decelerate this year. If ESG policies are allowed to continue, as a recent  Buckeye Institute study revealed, they can have disastrous effects on the U.S.’s food and energy supplies.

PHOTO CREDIT: Pixabay