To no one’s surprise, especially those who follow our comments, the “anti-ESG” and “anti-woke” efforts are funded by the same people behind other pernicious political initiatives like overturning Roe v. Wade, distorting history texts and banning books, and restricting LGBTQIA rights. We note that a lot of this money is currently being redirected from the Presidential election (not a lot of Trump supporters there) into Congressional, Senate, and state elections.

Deep-pocketed Republican influencers—including Thiel and Leonard Leo, the Federalist Society co-chair famous for spearheading the effort to stack courts with ultra-conservative judges—have helped boost [Vivek Ramaswamy’s] firm by making ESG a new culture war battleground and by propping up Ramaswamy, whose presidential campaign leaned heavily on his “anti-woke” bona fides. Strive says it wants to get politics out of business, but as its powerful backers push a vision of a retrograde, tradition-bound America, its work couldn’t be more political.

Let’s get one thing out of the way: ESG investing is far from perfect. It represents a pittance compared to the trillions in investment needed to stem climate change—only about 14 percent of global assets under management were invested in ESG products as of 2021. And ratings to measure what makes a “good” ESG investment aren’t standardized, which has enabled many a powerful firm to inflate the impact of their ESG funds, boosting their reputations while barely furthering environmental goals. Saudi Aramco, the world’s biggest oil company, even managed to raise billions from bonds contained in various ESG portfolios.

But despite its flaws, ESG is still probably the best available way to help measure the ethical and social behaviors of a company. There’s also the simple fact that ESG investing has proved to be profitable. “I want to know what the long-term impacts are of climate on a company. I want to incorporate that in my investment decision. That’s not political. That’s just good business,” says Witold Henisz, the director of the ESG initiative at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School of Business. “I’m not saying this is the morally right thing to do. I’m saying let’s look at the impact on revenues, on costs, on productivity.”

How “Woke Capitalism” Became a Right-Wing Obsession – Mother Jones

How “Woke Capitalism” Became a Right-Wing Obsession