Take a bow! Bloomberg declares ‘ESG Is in Its Flop Era’ as Donald ‘Drill, Baby, Drill’ Trump returns to WH – ‘Right-wing backlash has turned ESG into a four-letter word in terrified corporate boardrooms’
Bloomberg News: As a concept, environmentally responsible investing is in its flop era. Right-wing backlash has turned “ESG” into a four-letter word in terrified corporate boardrooms. Donald “Drill, Baby, Drill” Trump is returning to the White House. Bitcoin, possibly the least environmentally responsible investment on the planet, is at $100,000 and climbing. No doubt, green investments are having a grim year. Investors pulled $24 billion from climate-related funds during the first three quarters of 2024, Bloomberg News reported last month, citing Morningstar data. I’d be shocked if that didn’t get much worse in the fourth quarter, during which “Trump trades” of all kinds, including Bitcoin, have been ascendant. Green energy would seem to be the antithesis of a Trump trade. You can already see the damage in the S&P Global Clean Energy Index, which has tumbled in the fourth quarter compared with the S&P 500 Index.
"Clean-energy stocks have struggled over the past year, particularly since the US presidential election."
This is all about vibes. Fine, it’s a little bit about high interest rates, which hurt clean-energy investments. But it’s mainly vibes. Even before Trump’s election, corporate leaders were running scared from ESG in response to a political backlash led by Republicans at all levels of government. Last month, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton sued several large asset managers, accusing them of conspiring to use ESG investing to hurt the fossil-fuel industry. On Friday, Goldman Sachs said it was leaving the Net-Zero Banking Alliance (part of the Glasgow Financial Alliance for Net Zero, which is co-chaired by Bloomberg LP founder Mike Bloomberg and Bloomberg Inc. chair Mark Carney), joining a stampede of other banks out of such groups. Goldman, like many of its peers, suggested it had achieved a state of green independence and no longer needed the support of others. Maybe, but the subtext in all of these announcements is clear: It’s time to lay low.
https://www.climatedepot.com/2024/12/10/take-a-bow-bloomberg-declares-esg-is-in-its-flop-era-right-wing-backlash-has-turned-esg-as-donald-drill-baby-drill-trump-returns-to-wh-right-wing-backlash-has-turned/
