‘Climate cartel’ forcing US companies to obey climate agenda, says report
A report published by the House Judiciary Committee on Tuesday revealed that a “climate cartel” is forcing American corporations to comply with environmental, social, and governance (ESG) mandates.
What is ESG?
ESG is a form of grading companies and countries on how well they conform to prevailing narratives on environmental and social issues. For example, the more “environmentally friendly” or “racially inclusive” a company purports to be, the more virtuous it is and thus more worthy of investment, according to the cartel. If a company’s ESG score is below certain thresholds, they are not to be invested in at all.
Who is in the climate cartel?
According to the congressional report, companies are being forced to comply with ESG by a conglomerate of environmental groups, investment firms, and the world’s most powerful corporations.
This cartel includes BlackRock, State Street, and Vanguard, who together own 21.9% of companies on the S&P 500 and have nearly 25% voting power. It also includes investment firms such as Arjuna Capital, Trillium Asset Management, Engine No. 1 LP, and Aviva Investors Americas. Other members of the cartel include Climate Action 100+, nonprofit climate groups like Ceres, state pension funds like the California Public Employees’ Retirement System (CalPERS), and stockholder engagement service providers like As You Sow.
‘The climate cartel is waging a Global World War’
Together, these entities strong-arm American corporations into making commitments to “decarbonize” and achieve certain net-zero goals by 2050. Companies who refuse are considered to be on “the wrong side of climate history” and are punished by the cartel. Such punishments include voting against managers who do not comply, filing shareholder resolutions to force ESG, and replacing board members.
“The climate cartel has declared war on the American way of life,” says the report. “The climate cartel is waging ‘a Global World War’ for net zero against disfavored American companies, including those in the fossil fuel, aviation, and farming industries that allow Americans to drive, fly, and eat.”
The House Judiciary Committee reviewed over 270,000 documents from cartel members and more than 2.5 million pages of related information. The data suggest that cartel members view themselves as engaged in a holy war which has “only just begun.”
They refer to themselves in militant terms, claiming to be in a “Global World War.”
“[The cartel] has described Climate Action 100+ as ‘the global Navy,’ and compared Ceres’s efforts to ‘the Army ground troops’ and 'an ‘air cover’ strategic and silent bombing campaign by a newly funded division of the Air Force,’” the report added.
Some goals of the cartel include reducing the number of total flights by 12% to curb greenhouse gas emissions, with airplane travel “capped at 2019 levels.” They also include reducing “food demand growth” and slashing beef consumption by half of current US consumption levels.
Net zero or no investment
Another tactic used by the cartel to coerce companies into ESG compliance is to make investments contingent on climate pledges. A syndicate of 23 venture capital firms called Venture Climate Alliance (VCA), for example, requires startups to pledge their commitment to eliminating all their carbon emissions by 2050 to “combat climate change.”
