There’s an old saying that the good fight is never ever finished. It’s a constant battle to keep the reactionary tides at bay.
For instance there was good news on Thursday morning with the Victorian government announcing it would revive the State Electricity Commission to own renewable energy projects and that it would legislate the closure of all coal-fired power plants by 2035, nicely in line with a 95 per cent emissions reduction target.
And we had all started to feel a bit “lighter” that our federal government had changed and that the world was finally committed to the biggest challenge humanity has ever faced- (ummm probably something to do with the non-stop global “weather events” as they are now colloquially normalised).
But then along comes another big wallop.
Emily Aitkin, in her Heated newsletter, recently pointed out that the anti-ESG (environment, social, governance) backlash has arrived.
Emily is that intrepid journo from the US who brands her title as “a newsletter for people who are pissed off about the climate crisis”. She’s keeping her newsletter going based entirely on support from subscribers.
We at The Fifth Estate are not so brave as to attempt that little miracle of levitation. We too encourage our readers to become members and support us financially here, and we need financial support more than ever now that the drama of the pandemic is over.
We also enthusiastically invite advertisers and sponsors to make use of our reach to our incredibly influential readership while at the same time supporting quality independent journalism for the sustainability transition.
Emily is an old-school purist. The deteriorating economy in the US is hurting her valiant enterprise right now, she shares in her latest newsletter.
But something else is hurting the rest of us too.
Emily says this new anti-woke investment trend is starting to gain traction. It aims to stop the decarbonisation transition and go back to supporting fossil fuels.
Here’s what’s going down in one publication:
“Texas has since September required any financial company entering into new contracts or renewing contracts with state entities to affirm they do not and will not ‘boycott energy companies’, [that is fossil fuel companies]”
Apparently 21 states are opposed to the proposed Securities and Exchange Commission rule to require companies to disclose their greenhouse gas emissions.
The trend is “sweeping conservative America,” Emily says.
Its proponents want to stop corporations from following ESG principles because they are terrified of valuing “left-wing” principals over the “financial interests of businesses and their employees, and should be prevented by law from doing so”.
Ouch…
One of the big supporters in this anti-woke movement is Elon Musk.
If you had some lingering regard for Elon Musk now is the time to drop it. The man is sounding increasingly disconnected (or unhinged?) from planet earth as his phenomenal financial power clearly overloads the capacity of his synapses to micro process our future.
“ESG is a scam. It has been weaponised by phony social justice warriors,” he said after S&P Global, who runs a popular ESG index, removed Musk’s electric car company Tesla from the index due to its lacking carbon strategy and poor codes of business conduct.
Tim Buckley, who we caught up with briefly at the E2E2 Conference on the UTS Aerial Conference Centre on Wednesday, dismissed this movement, we were relieved to hear. That’s America, he said. Whereyou can expect a non-stop rollout of such nonsense.
The giant investment fund manager BlackRock, has been hammered by this reactionary guard and boss Larry Fink for his clarion call to climate action, which has been one of the prime movers in the financial world.
According to Climate and Capital: “The company is also furiously back-peddling from Fink’s lofty climate rhetoric to placate angry conservatives demanding state pension funds stop doing business with BlackRock because of his alleged anti-fossil views. Where once BlackRock’s website had proudly trumpeted the urgency to confront climate change, it is now talking up innovation in the oil and gas industry with a friendly oil company CEO and proclaiming it is their fiduciary role not to boycott the energy industry.”
Bloomberg said several of the largest banks, including JPMorgan, Bank of America, and Morgan Stanley, that had been part of the 2021 United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP26) as members of the world’s biggest zero-carbon finance club now look like they’re backtracking.
“Their membership in the Glasgow Financial Alliance for Net Zero (GFANZ), a group of roughly 500 financial sector entities, publicly committed their banks to reach net-zero carbon emissions by midcentury.
“By September they were among a faction ready to quit,” the news outlet’s sources said.
But Buckley says it’s not quite so dire, that the situation is more nuanced. And Fortune says Larry Fink claims he’s being attacked equally from the left and the right so “he must be doing something right”.
He’s facing actions such as Louisiana “pulling nearly $800 million from BlackRock funds”. And other states have also “lashed out at BlackRock for pursuing a ‘climate agenda’ at odds with generating returns for state pensions”.
“Fink lamented that he also faces criticism from the other end of the political spectrum, including in New York City, where the comptroller sent a letter expressing concern BlackRock is backing away from commitments to reduce carbon emissions.”
While Fink has responded to the growing pressure by softening his stance on gas (along with oil)… too many people now are saying there is a place for gas for decades to come; it’s not going away any time soon, our sources say.
At the A2EP conference the story was that gas will stay for some uses, but it should not be in new buildings. In fact industry expert Bruce Precious of Six Capitals Consulting who was on a panel moderated by The Fifth Estate on Wednesday said there might be a place for renewable gas “but it’s not in buildings”.
He called for strong policy settings that would allow businesses and consumers alike to make the right choices for appliances and kit that might last for 10 or 15 years. Austria for instance will ban boilers from 2025 and so has the International Energy Agency.
Brilliant.
But some places still mandate gas. Some jurisdictions still stop companies such as GTP rolling out the massive solar capacity it has, with a swathe of industrial roofs on which to place the panels, we heard from Ben Thomas the company’s national manager, sustainability integration on the same.
We know that the rising deployment of fossil fuels at present is driven by economics and the Russian invasion of Ukraine that has caused a shortage of energy. But at the same time this is speeding up the transition to renewables and high efficiency equipment.
- Australia could become the world’s lithium quarry as massive structural changes are underway
Even so… we can’t see the future, we don’t know if there are any other Putin look-alikes waiting to throw big global spanners in the works.
We confess we didn’t see the anti-ESG movement coming.
But we should have. We know how wily the fossil fuel industry is. It can afford the most brilliant spin merchants in the world to twist the facts and manipulate the politicians.
We can see the same backlash to a whole range of social movements that were supposed to have been “won” decades or even centuries ago.
So bad luck for We the People who care about a future worth fighting for. There is no resting. There are no laurels. There is no ultimate “win” nor end point. There is only the process.
And it must continue. Always.