IN THIS ISSUE:
- Private Climate Cabal Under Investigation
- AAA Totes Up Big Range Losses for EVs in Extreme Weather
- Subsidence Driving High Sea Level Rise Measurements
Private Climate Cabal Under Investigation
For a few years now, I and others at The Heartland Institute have detailed how a private climate cabal of elite investors, bankers, tech firms, and leaders from other industries have collaborated to push the environment and social governance (ESG) and diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) agenda across the economy and individual lives, in the United States and even more so in Europe.
In April 2023, Heartland Research Fellow Jack McPherrin produced a comprehensive report explaining why the use of ESG scores by woke, wealthy, and politically connected bankers and investors, along with the European Union, was a powerful threat to individual liberty, free markets, the U.S. economy, and American prosperity. Building on that paper and in response to federal actions under President Joe Biden to impose ESG mandates on companies and individuals through banking and investment regulations, The Heartland Institute has led the fight at the federal and state levels to halt ESG efforts and penalize companies for hamstringing U.S. geopolitical and economic sovereignty and progress through those actions.
Following Heartland’s recommendations, several states have barred their governments from doing business with institutional investors and mega-asset managers like BlackRock, State Street, and Vanguard. States such as Texas and Florida led the way.
As I detailed in early 2025, shortly after President Trump’s election, even before he was sworn in as president for the second time, various climate alliances and groups with U.N. affiliations comprising hundreds, if not thousands of banks and top companies began to fall apart as business leaders, reading the tea leaves, began withdrawing from the organizations. In the process the companies announced they were scaling back, if not abandoning entirely, the climate commitments they had made upon joining the groups.
The pressure on ESG-pushing corporate heads to focus on profits, losses, and returns to investors, and on satisfying consumer demand instead of enforced climate change orthodoxy, has only grown since then.
In late April of this year, the attorneys general (AGs) of 23 states sent a joint letter to the heads of the three largest U.S. credit rating agencies—Fitch Ratings, Moody’s, and S&P Global Ratings—requiring them to account for how their pledges to reach net zero or their carbon dioxide reduction targets were incorporated in their company ratings. The ratings agencies had been working with U.N.-endorsed or -certified corporate membership organizations committed to net zero goals and meeting or exceeding the Paris climate agreement’s emission reduction targets. These agencies’ ratings can make or break a company, affecting a firm’s or industry’s ability to secure financing and driving down stock ratings, prices and businesses’ reputations.
Specifically, the state AGs want the ratings agencies to explain how their ESG standards have affected the ratings and recommendations they have been giving to U.S. companies involved in the development, production, delivery, sale, and use of fossil fuels for production and on cities and states that are heavily invested in fossil fuels.
The AGs express concern the ratings agencies’ ESG goals represent a material conflict of interest compromising their ability to provide unbiased ratings of companies involved in fossil fuel production. In addition, the agencies endorse ESG funds despite their subpar performance in comparison with funds and companies driven purely by profit maximization. The AGs also raise the concern the ratings agencies have violated antitrust laws by colluding to enforce common ESG standards tied to climate goals.
“Credit ratings agencies are supposed to provide honest, objective financial analysis that investors and consumers can trust,” said Idaho Attorney General Raul Labrador, a signatory to the letter, in a press release announcing the investigation. “Instead, these agencies made undisclosed climate commitments, used their ratings to downgrade American energy companies based on those commitments, and then sold those same companies consulting services to help improve their scores.
“Those decisions ripple through the economy and contribute to higher energy costs for Idaho families,” Labrador continued.
Specifically, the letter states,
Fitch Ratings, Moody’s Investors Service, and S&P Global Ratings (the “Ratings Agencies”) have engaged in various downgrades of fossil-fuel companies or sectors (the “Downgrades”) based on highly speculative ESG predictions and goals. The Downgrades materially contravened the Ratings Agencies’ stated methodologies and are consistent with undisclosed material conflicts of interest, including the fact that (1) all three agencies have pledged to a United Nations-backed group that they will “incorporat[e] ESG into credit ratings and analysis in a systematic … way,” and (2) Moody’s and S&P pledged to help “achieve” net zero. The Ratings Agencies have used the same flawed methodologies to downgrade, or to threaten to downgrade, states and municipalities with fossil-fuel production revenues. The Ratings Agencies’ actions in creating and maintaining the Downgrades implicate federal laws related to their obligations as SEC-registered ratings organizations to follow stated methodologies and avoid conflicts, and also implicate state consumer protection laws that prohibit misrepresentations and omissions. These failures ripple throughout the economy, reducing fossil-fuel production and contributing to the current high gas prices facing consumers.
The letter goes on demonstrate that the ratings agencies’ climate change policies are not required by law, are not justified by science, violate their own investment policies and federal law, and are harming consumers and the economy.
The letter closes with a series of questions the AGs are requesting the companies answer in detail and outlines five steps the AGs state are necessary to end these violations of securities laws and stop further actions by the AGs. Those actions are:
- Explain ESG-driven downgrades, within 90 days;
- Withdraw from or disclose ESG commitments, within 60 days;
- Revise sector-specific methodologies for the oil and gas industry, either removing ESG transition-risk factors entirely or limiting them within a defined, evidence-based time horizon;
- Eliminate or disclose ESG consulting conflicts, by, in part, ceasing to offer ESG advisory and consulting services to entities whose credit ratings the agency also determines; and
- Certify internal controls review by having each agency’s Chief Compliance Officer certify that internal controls have been reviewed and updated to prevent ESG commitments from influencing credit determinations.
Should the companies fail to comply with the deadlines set in the letter, the AGs will likely pursue enforcement action under various state and federal laws in coordination with the U.S. Department of Justice, the letter warns.
The window is closing on the time for corporate elites to adapt to the new reality that the federal government no longer recognizes climate change as a crisis in need of fixing or corporate leadership to fix. It’s time for companies to get back to the business of advancing the interests of their shareholders/owners and consumers, instead of salving their elite corporate directors’ consciences via green virtue signaling. Pushing ESG energy standards that restrict fossil fuel use and have no impact on climate change while hamstringing economic progress and peoples’ long-term well-being was never justifiable. Forcing companies to do so while the rating agencies profit from consulting with them on the changes was illegal and wrong. Finally, the AGs are moving to put things right.
Sources: ESG Today; Idaho Attorney General; Attorneys Generals Letter; The Heartland Institute
AAA Totes Up Big Range Losses for EVs in Extreme Weather
Independent research produced by the American Automobile Association (AAA) finds electric (EV) and hybrid vehicles (HV) don’t handle the heat or, even worse, the cold well, losing substantial amounts of range.
AAA’s automotive engineering team partnered with the Automobile Club of Southern California’s Automotive Research Center to test three EVs and three HVs across various temperature ranges: 20°F, 75°F, and 95°F. The cars were run on a dynamometer, similar to a treadmill that measures torque, horsepower, and in this case, travel range for vehicles. During the test, each car had its climate control system (heating and air conditioning) set at 72 degrees.
Compared to operating at temperatures of 75℉ and 95℉:
- EVs experience an 8.5 percent loss of average driving range at 20°F, equivalent to a 10.4 percent loss in fuel economy, adding as much as $16.25 to driving costs at public charging stations, although sometimes higher depending on the cost of electricity in the charging area;
- HVs experienced a 12 percent decrease in miles per gallon, or fuel efficiency, adding $28.44 to fuel costs per 1,000 miles.
The decline in operating range for EVs and HVs is even steeper during extremely cold weather. Compared to operating at 75℉,:
- EVs saw an average drop in comparative fuel economy of a 35.6 percent, and a 39.0 percent decrease in driving range when operating at 20℉, adding, per AAA, “$32.11 per 1,000 miles when charged at home electricity rates and $76.93 per 1,000 miles when using public charging;”
- HVs lose 22.8 percent in fuel economy, adding $28.44 in cost per 1,000 miles.
Cold temperatures further complicate travel in another way. It takes vehicles longer to charge or recharge in the cold. This means that on an extended trip, drivers have to plan their routes more carefully to find operating charging stations closer together, and they must spend even more time than normal “fueling” up. That is a serious consideration when one considers EV and HV drivers already spend much more time than average when compared to drivers of vehicles powered by internal combustion engines: from 30 minutes to multiple hours more, depending on the type of charging facility and amount of competition with other drivers for charging outlets.
As NPR notes in an article discussing AAA’s research, “The AC and heat are a surprisingly big draw on a vehicle’s energy,” so AAA has several recommendations for extending driving range in hot and cold temperatures. Among them: if your EV or HV has seat heaters or coolers, use them and them alone when driving during extreme cold or heat, respectively. Did you get that? The way to get the driving range promised by EVs and HVs is to keep your air conditioning off during the summer and your heater off during the winter. Other recommendations are to precondition your battery before charging and run your climate control system while charging, thus drawing power directly from the grid rather than the vehicle.
That brings to mind the problems with electric buses in Oslo and Sweden, where the vehicles have failed to complete their rounds during the winter, forcing those jurisdictions and others to pull them from service, severely truncate their routes, and turn off the heat during travel, leaving passengers shivering at bus stops while waiting for vehicles that never arrive, stranded in buses that have stalled, or in buses running with the heat turned off.
Subsidence Driving High Sea Level Rise Measurements
Sea levels are rising, as they have with some regularity since the end of the last glacial cycle. They have in fact risen more than 400 feet on average around the globe over the past 12,000 years.
Although there is no consistent trend for sea levels—with measured rise at tide gauges remaining relatively flat in some locations, rising in others, and even declining in some locations—in general the data show seas are rising at about .08 to 1.2 inches a decade, depending on whether satellite measurements (and which sets of satellite data) or tide gauge data is used. Recently a new array of satellites has measured a slight uptick in global average sea level rise. Leaving aside the question of whether the slight increase, if true and not an artifact of change in the satellite measurement system, is outside the norm of historic sea level rise (it’s not), or unmanageable (it’s not), the question remains: What accounts for the recent rise in sea levels?
A paper in Nature finds it’s a combination of human and natural factors, and that one of the anthropogenic causes is underappreciated and may be a larger factor than global warming.
An international team of 11 researchers from universities and research institutes in the United States, the United Kingdom, Germany, Canada, and China note the role and causes of land subsidence or vertical land motion (VLM), often confused with rising seas, are little-studied but are a large factor in the measured increase in average sea levels.
The team examined data from 65 percent of coastal cities, including delta cities across South East Asia, which are not commonly covered in research on coastal sea level rise. They found that from 1995 to 2020, coastal populations experienced twice as much sea level rise as could be attributed to factors such as global warming. In fact, their data suggests 71 percent of coastal populations are living in zones with serious subsidence problems.
Dozens of articles at ClimateRealism.com have pointed out the role land subsidence plays in measured sea level rise, complicating the ability to distinguish the contribution of natural factors, including from climate change, versus other human factors.
Heavy development on soft coastal soils leads to compaction; rivers being channelized for ship traffic and to reduce random flooding prevents historical soil deposition; wetlands being drained for development results in greater flooding and rising tides; and groundwater withdrawal for growing coastal populations’ water needs causes direct subsidence. These are all serious human factors resulting in significant VLM.
“Observations show that VLM can exceed contemporary absolute sea-level . . . changes by as much as an order of magnitude (or more) in susceptible areas, like global deltas and especially coastal cities located on deltas,” write the research team. “[G]roundwater-extraction-related subsidence rates of up to 10 mm/year have contributed to much higher [relative sea level rise] changes than the global average in deltas, such as in the Mekong delta … , or cities built on low-lying deltaic and coastal plains such as Bangkok, Manila, or Jakarta.”
Although the researchers involved in this study do not suggest they doubt climate change is contributing to sea level rise, their research indicates that as coastal areas are increasingly developed, VSL is playing a larger role than climate change in relative sea level changes than is commonly acknowledged, and maybe even a bigger role than climate change in many locations.
Sources: Nature; Climate Realism
