Joen Coronel, 09 April 2021
Back in December, Bloomberg published a sweeping expose that raised serious questions about the ESG investing craze sweeping the world. In the piece, Bloomberg detailed how the Nature Conservancy, the world’s biggest environmental group and a prominent seller of carbon offsets, had sold “worthless” credits to JPMorgan, Disney and BlackRock as the corporations sought to finance the protection of carbon-absorbing forest land to absolve them of their sins tied to fossil fuel usage.
Carbon credits and so-called “green” bonds are some of the most popular ESG-focused products that are being purchased by corporations, or ESG investment funds. But as Bill Blain pointed out in his Morning Porridge a couple of weeks back, it looks like the ESG craze is already becoming too ‘woke’ for its own good, as companies and institutional investors are chiefly concerned with virtue signaling, and less concerned with whether the products they’re buying are actually making a difference in the fight against climate change.
