Is the anti ESG wave sweeping across the United States? Fuel for Cultural War in Election Year

On March 6, 2024, 10 Republican individuals in North Korea filed a lawsuit against the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission for violating its enforcement powers and complying with the Constitution, accusing them of violating the commission’s new regulations.
Earlier that day, the Securities and Exchange Commission of the United States issued new regulations, requesting listed companies to disclose in their annual reports and registration forms the meteorological risks faced by their operations, the planning for handling such risks, and the financial impact that extreme weather events can cause.

The new regulations began to take shape in 2022 and were immediately defended by Republicans. After nearly two years of pushing and sawing, the Securities and Exchange Commission of the United States has lost the most controversial substance in its final version, which is to request companies to disclose non direct emissions originating from the cost chain.
The lawsuit filed by Republicans against the Securities and Exchange Commission in the United States is a part of the country’s anti ESG activities. ESG (Environmental, Social and Governance) is a shortened form of “situation, society, and management”, which refers to a method of considering situational, social, and managerial identities in investment and business operation decision-making plans. These identities also serve as a benchmark for investors to compare.
At the beginning of this month, the four major banks in the United States announced their entry into domestic green finance to promote the “Equator Guidelines”; The forward figure advocating ESG, Terry Fink, CEO of Blackstone Group, began to prevent the use of the term ESG in public places; JPMorgan Chase, State Street Investment Management, and Pacific Investment Management have announced their entry into the Climate Action 100+meteorological investment alliance.
More than 30 states in the United States have implemented or proposed laws that limit ESG, and a wave of anti ESG sentiment has swept across the country. But in terms of real investment, institutional statistics show that in previous years, the investment in power transformation in the United States has not increased, but has continued to rise.
In the election year of the United States, ESG, like abortion rights, immigration, gender identity, climate change, and awakened civilization, became a fuel for civilization and harmony.
Republican rising star and Florida Governor Ron de Santis directly referred to ESG as a “resourceful consciousness” representing left-wing benefits. Conservative activists joined the anti ESG campaign with tens of millions of dollars, launching a counterattack against Blackstone’s CEO, Fink, as a follower of enlightened civilization.
Faced with conservative civilization and encirclement, although Fink no longer mentions the term ESG, the Blackstone group continues to silently invest in the name of power transformation.
Anti ESG laws are piling up
US law firm Ropes&Gray has been tracking ESG legislation and strategies in various states of the United States. Stopping data from March 8th, more than 30 states in the United States have implemented or proposed ESG limiting laws.
Image source: Ropes&Gray
According to interface statistics, there are 110 more ESG regulations being implemented and not yet agreed upon by each state. But most of them are not current bills, and there are at least 72 bills that have not been approved yet.
The number of states expected to agree to the bill is clearly in line with whether the state is Democratic dominated or Republican controlled, with most Republican vote states relying on fossil fuels for economic maintenance.
Oklahoma, Missouri, South Carolina, and West Virginia are expected to agree to the largest number of limited ESG laws, with Oklahoma having 15, Missouri and South Carolina having 11, and West Virginia having 8.
These four states are all dominated by the Republican Party, and not only are the governors Republican, but the state legislatures are also controlled by the Republican Party. The bill that Oklahoma is looking forward to agreeing to requests permission for state governments to use ESG and other measures when bidding, and companies that have won state government contracts must also declare that they will not take personal ESG measures when suspending employment and evaluating employees.
In another state dominated by the Republican Party, New Hampshire, the anti ESG bill proposed by local lawmakers was too extreme and even opposed by the Republicans themselves. The bill requests that Montaigners who knowingly comply with ESG regulations when representing the state government to cease investment will be considered a heavy credit, and relevant personnel will face imprisonment for no less than 1 year and no more than 20 years.
In Kansas, where Democrats serve as governors and Republicans control the state legislature, one of the four bills expected to be voted on is to support the state pension fund in considering ESG status when it stops investing. In the Democratic controlled state of New York, all four current strategies are aimed at supporting ESG use, and only one of the four pending bills requests to limit ESG use. The opposition to this bill is basically a foregone conclusion.
The stark difference in ESG results between the Republican and Democratic parties in the United States is precisely the result of a civilized and intensified election year.
According to previous reports, HSBC’s “Emotional Investigation Report on ESG Marketplace by Global Financial Institutions” in previous years pointed out that the current global anti ESG trend mainly appears in the United States, and is not obvious in other regions.
Although the anti ESG trend in the United States has disappeared in previous years, it has not reduced its investment in reality.
Bloomberg New Power Finance’s statement released earlier this year showed that global investment in low-carbon power transformation increased by 17% year-on-year in previous years, dropping to $1.77 trillion. The investment in the United States decreased to $303 billion, a year-on-year increase of 22%.
American civilization and
Starting from the mid-term election in the United States in 2022, civilization and harmony have become increasingly intense. The civilization of the United States is not a new phenomenon that has emerged in recent years.
In 1980, religious conservatives in the United States, who had the idea of limiting abortion and refraining from praying in schools, established the “Moral Majority” group to help Republican Ronald Reagan be elected as the leader of the United States. After Reagan took office, the “moral majority” formed a “Christian alliance” with another conservative faction, becoming a representative to counter the liberals.
In 1991, James Hunter, a professor at the University of Virginia in the United States, published the book “Civilization and the Struggle to Define America”. Civilization and the vocabulary began to appear in the newspapers. The civilization of the United States is mainly a struggle between liberals and conservatives in terms of cognitive status. The two factions have different survival outcomes in terms of race, abortion rights, gender identity, gun control, immigration, and many other aspects. The escalating confrontation between the Republican Party and the Democratic Party has also led to increasing differences between conservatives and liberals.
In previous years, Florida Governor De Santis, who was considered the only opponent of Donald Trump’s party at the time, was generous in firing shots at Disney, the largest shop owner in Florida, in order to improve support, accusing Disney of being corrupted by left-wing “enlightened civilization”. Disney subsequently opened a law enforcement lawsuit with De Santis.
“Consciousness of civilization” was originally a vocabulary used by African Americans in equal rights activities, which meant that individuals recognized social and racial inequality. After the “Black Man’s Life is Life” campaign in 2014, the term “awakened civilization” became popular again.
But now, conservative Republicans see the awakening of civilization as a left-wing state of understanding. De Santis believed that the realization of civilization is the belief that the survival of American society is “systematically unjust” and that this injustice needs to be corrected. He firmly supports this state of understanding, believing that the realization of civilization is a slander against American history and the maintenance of America’s institutional system.
Even before the midterm elections, De Santis referred to ESG as “consciousness resourceism.”. He initiated a halt to law enforcement in Florida to prevent fund managers from comparing ESG targets with state government capital investments. De Santis believed that ESG is a left-wing understanding state in which companies apply their rights to promote.
In previous years, the conservative non-profit organization Marble Freedom Trust joined at least $10 million in anti ESG activities. Leonard Leo, President of the Left Federalist Association, accused ESG of “purifying” American civilization and declared that members of the association would block left-wing control of this area. When Trump was in power, the Federalist Association worked hard to help him select the Supreme Court justices.
As a forward figure advocating for ESG, Fink, the CEO of Blackstone Group, has become the focus of the attack. The Marble Freedom Trust agency specialized in creating web pages and attacked Fink as followers of enlightened civilization.
Image source: https://whoislarryfink.com/
According to The Wall Street Journal, Republican officials in Florida, Texas, South Carolina, and Louisiana have received over $4 billion in investment capital from the Blackstone group from 2022 to previous years.
At the end of previous years, during an interview with Meng, Fink made it clear that he would no longer use the term ESG due to its different meanings for different people. But he also stated that 56% of investors in the Blackstone group’s survey plan to stop investing more in the carbon crossing category.
Mark Weidman, a powerful seller of Blackstone Group’s worldwide customer business, no longer used the term ESG in an interview with Mong earlier this month, but instead used “transformational investment.”. He stated that ESG is a vague perspective for many clients, but transformational investment is very specific.
According to Harvard Business School Associate Professor Elizabeth Kemp’s 2022 statistics, nearly 70% of corporate executives in the United States are affiliated with the Republican Party, with only 31% claiming to be Democrats.
How to prevent being involved in civilization and not being obstructed by Republican colleagues has become a new achievement that American corporate executives need to consider. Talking about ESG in public does not mean that American companies are no longer optimistic about environmental protection.
According to US media reports, the Blackstone group is adding billions of dollars in capital to its infrastructure, which is also affecting the transition from fossil fuels to clean power.