Why ESG is a puppet show

There's a spectre haunting ESG, the new trend towards investment funds seeking to consider things other than their financial bottom line. ESG stands for Environmental, Social and Governance. But there's a problem. Often firms are not well placed to improve outcomes beyond their own immediate purview. Thus divestment from high-emissions firms might seem like a good idea, but it turns out to have minimal impact on emissions. This is as one might expect because it simply passes the invest onto investors who don't care about the issue.  In fact there's a more powerful reason which is that starving emissions-intensive firms of funds is likely to depress their investment which they need to reduce emissions. And since the 20% of firms with the highest emissions emit 280 times what the least emitting 20% firms emit, reducing the emissions of the high-emissions firms is very likely to be where the biggest climate change action is going to be. These are genuine dilemmas but investment firms who seek to target ESG tend not to level with their retail investors that this is what is going on. They're much more likely to do their best and then 'sell' their members some calming PR on how their investments are making a difference. We talk about a left field way round this dilemma.  If you'd like to see the video of this discussion you can find it here.