The New GOP voter says environmental, social, and governance scoring has been weaponized
Elon Musk called the environmental, social, and governance (ESG) scoring “a scam” in a series of Twitter posts on May 18, citing S&P Global’s inclusion of ExxonMobil Corporation in its ESG Index while his own electric car company, Tesla Motors, was removed.
“Exxon is rated top ten best in world for environment, social & governance (ESG) by S&P 500, while Tesla didn’t make the list! ESG is a scam. It has been weaponized by phony social justice warriors,” Musk wrote.
In subsequent Twitter posts, Musk claimed that Tesla has done “more for the environment than any company ever” and asserted that S&P Global “has lost their integrity.”
The comments come in the midst of Musk’s fight to acquire Twitter and shortly before Musk again announced that he planned to switch his vote from Democrat to Republican.
“In the past I voted Democrat, because they were (mostly) the kindness party. But they have become the party of division & hate, so I can no longer support them and will vote Republican. Now, watch their dirty tricks campaign against me unfold,” he wrote.
A spokesperson for S&P Dow Jones Indices (DJI) told The Epoch Times that ExxonMobil wasn’t ranked among the “top ten best in the world” on ESG by S&P. In actuality, ExxonMobil was highlighted in a May 17 blog post on S&P’s ESG index because it’s among the 10 largest companies in that index by market capitalization.
In that blog post, S&P DJI’s Margaret Dorn attributed the removal of Tesla to its relative decline in the Automobiles & Components sector, as well as the absence of a carbon strategy, its codes of business conduct, and allegations of widespread racism at Tesla’s Fremont, California, factory.
Dorn also cited Tesla’s “handling” of an investigation into Tesla’s phantom braking problem, which was announced by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) in April.
