Environmental, social, and governance (ESG) scores are an insidiously envisioned mechanism by which ideologically aligned influential interests represented by unelected supranational organizations are attempting to “reset” the global financial system to their advantage. This emerging design would circumvent national and individual sovereignty by altering traditional financial methods of assessing risk and debt / capital allocation. This attempted shift from “shareholder capitalism” to a “stakeholder collectivism” model hinges upon assigning companies, and soon individuals, arbitrarily determined ESG scores. These scores would mandate subjective and difficult-to-define and evaluate metrics assessing one’s commitment to “climate” and “social justice” issues. Essentially, poorly scored companies suffer reduced or altogether eliminated access to capital and credit, while highly scored companies receive “preferred status” capital in-flows via traditional capital and debt markets, in addition to tax credits, grants, access to “special financial vehicles,” preferential contracting, and potentially other yet-to-be-defined advantages through future legislation, executive action, or international treaty.
ESG’s metrics have ostensibly been designed to combat systemic global problems such as climate change, racial inequality, and world hunger—in alignment with the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals. In reality, these measures will simply centralize power and control in the hands of unelected technocrats and private global institutions influenced solely by the wealthy elite that control monetary policy, capital, and credit through global central banks, where “baskets of currencies” make up the current global system. ESG is a major step toward consolidating a unitary global governance model utilizing digital identification and central bank digital currencies (CBDCs) as micromanagement tools that can be isolated upon individual transactions. ESG would therefore be a major step towards the dissolution of free markets, national sovereignty, due process under the law, and individual liberty.
Below is a brief description of the role of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) in coercing companies into ESG compliance.
Jack McPherrin is The Heartland Institute’s research editor, as well as a research fellow within Heartland’s Socialism Research Center.
