ESG Investing Soars as Blind Eye Turned to China, Energy Crisis Worsens: Analysts

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Environmental considerations said to dominate social, governance factors in ESG investing

The growing prominence of environmental, social, and governance (ESG) factors in investing is unmistakable, but major downsides to the trend are emerging. 

ESGโ€™s social and corporate governance components are ostensibly to compel investors to assess if a company is, for example, complicit in human rights violations or putting employee health and safety at risk. But the environmental component, which appears to be overwhelming the other two considerations, itself turns a blind eye to communist Chinaโ€™s record and the undeniable need for fossil fuel energy currently. 

A Sept. 22 report by Hong Kong Watch (HKW) highlights the paradox that investment in China soared even as ESG factors rapidly grew in adoption.

The report, titled โ€œESG, China and Human Rightsโ€”Why the time has come for investors to act,โ€ says that โ€œmost of the attention of ESG investors has been placed on environmental costs, with little attention given to human rights.โ€

โ€œThere is considerable investment by pension funds and other institutional investors into Chinese firms which have troubling human rights records,โ€ stated the news release announcing the report.

โ€˜Should Be Boycottedโ€™

Canadaโ€™s biggest pension funds are among those that are very bullish on China. But they also want to be seen as doing their part for the environment, and they are all-in on ESG.

This worries Alex Epstein, founder of the Center for Industrial Progress and author of the New York Times bestseller โ€œThe Moral Case for Fossil Fuels.โ€ 

ESG โ€œshould be publicly shamed as a virtue-signalling, financially idiotic, and most importantly immoral movement,โ€ Epstein tweeted on June 10 as part of a Twitter thread

He added that โ€œESG is starving cost-effective energy of capitalโ€ and โ€œshould be boycotted wherever possible.โ€

Caisse de dรฉpรดt et placement du Quรฉbec (CDPQ), Canadaโ€™s second-largest pension plan, with over $390 billion under management, on Sept. 28 announced that, as part of its new climate strategy, it aimed to completely exit from investments in oil production by the end of 2022. 

By Rahul Vaidyanath

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