You Will Own Nothing by Carol Roth

Author:Carol Roth
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2023-05-20T00:00:00+00:00

Google Searches for “ESG Investing”; Interest Over Time; January 2004 to October 2022

Source: Google Trends, https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?q=esg%20investing&date=all&geo=US. Numbers represent search interest relative to the highest point on the chart for the given region and time. A value of 100 is the peak popularity for the term. A value of 50 means that the term is half as popular. A score of 0 means there was not enough data for this term.

The first thing on the page said, “This project is part of the World Economic Forum’s Shaping the Future of Investing Platform,” which absolutely does not sound sinister at all.

This is some of what they had to say about their long-term plans:

In Phase 1 (2012–2015), the initiative set a solid foundation for the World Economic Forum’s ongoing thought leadership in this sector via a series of formative reports. In Phase 2 (2016–present), the initiative has been mobilizing investors, governments and enterprises to create an enabling environment that provides tangible pathways to scale both sustainable and impact investing approaches.

It’s pretty clear from their own words that the WEF is taking a large amount of credit for the ESG push and has plans to stay centrally involved. They write, “The Forum network is uniquely positioned to provide influence and direction for the traditional investing community, governments, and enterprises with the desire to see positive systems change.”

Under the title Active Workstreams, they touted the following: “Building an Effective Ecosystem for ESG (Environmental, Social and Governance): A multi-stakeholder effort to increase the coherence of initiatives within the ESG reporting ecosystem—ultimately boosting transparency, corporate performance and supporting usage of ESG in the investment process.”

And who are the folks involved? They have an interactive “ESG Ecosystem Map” to help you “decipher the who is who and the dynamics of ESG reporting.”

Right at the top are the UN Global Compact, major accounting standards boards, major accounting and consulting firms, and business media and reporting firms, including Bloomberg, S&P, and Thomson Reuters, among others.

Looking back at the WEF’s 2020 report, they note, “At the close of 2019, the scene was set for a new era of stakeholder capitalism through the reinvigorated ‘2020 Davos Manifesto.’ Nearly five decades after the original was released in 1973, articulating that the purpose of business is to serve more than shareholders alone, the updated manifesto expands on this idea by stating, ‘A company is more than an economic unit generating wealth. . . . Performance must be measured not only on the return to shareholders, but also on how it achieves its environmental, social and good governance objectives.’”39

They also quote the then–global head of sustainable investing at BlackRock as saying, “We cannot wait for corporate reporting to become perfect; we need to become more forward‑looking now and push for better corporate reporting at the same time.” Who was this gentleman? His name is Brian Deese. If that sounds familiar, it is because Brian Deese was a senior advisor to President Obama prior to his BlackRock stint and now is director of the National Economic Council of the United States, under President Biden.

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