The tune is different but the lyrics remain the same.

BlackRock began renaming environmental, social and governance (ESG) earlier this year. It’s now calling it “transition investing.”

The company recently updated its climate and decarbonization stewardship guidelines. The document makes no mention of ESG, but it shows in many ways, the world’s largest investment manager with $10 trillion in assets under management is still pursuing many of the same goals. 

When the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) adopted final rules regarding climate disclosures in March, critics were partially relieved that the most stringent aspects of the proposed rules weren’t included. The rule still faces a number of legal challenges by parties who argue the rules violate the First Amendment, the SEC exceeded its authority, and compliance will drive up costs and hurt consumers. 

There were indications that ESG’s rebrand would occur as indicated by this Bloomberg report earlier this year.

The ESG moniker has become so politicized that it now prevents clear-headed thinking, said Alex Edmans, who teaches at London Business School. He’s instead proposing the term “rational sustainability.” It may be bland, he said, but sustainability is about producing long-term value—and that’s hard to politicize.

“Advocates and critics have become so caught up in cheerleading and criticizing ESG, or scoring points against the other side, that they’ve lost sight of the shared goal to create long-term value,” he wrote in a Jan. 20 paper. He said it’s time to get back to basics and closer to the original intent of those United Nations officials who created the environmental, social and governance movement roughly two decades ago.

When one of the Left’s schemes is identified, opposed, and defeated, the Left typically changes tactics but continues on. This as evidenced by this Washington Post article published three months ago.

In March, Starbucks got shareholder approval to replace “representation” goals with “talent” performance for executive bonus incentives. At Molson Coors, “People & Planet” metrics have displaced environmental, social and governance (ESG) goals, and the acronym DEI has disappeared altogether.

Amid growing legal, social and political backlash, American businesses, industry groups and employment professionals are quietly scrubbing DEI from public view — though not necessarily abandoning itspractice. As they rebrand programs and hot-button acronyms, they’re reassessing decades-old anti-discrimination strategies and rewriting policies that once emphasized race and gender to prioritize inclusion for all.

Of course the claim that the DEI effort is about inclusion for all is a total lie since it really is another way to justify racism of a different kind. However, when it comes to ESG, BlackRock is its primary advocate and the company’s CEO, Larry Fink, is an ideologue through and through due to his commitment to the cause.

We’ve already suffered through this corporate environmentalism long enough and it needs to be exposed and put down as quickly as it rears its ugly head.

PHOTO CREDIT: Pixabay