(CNS News) – Entrepreneur and business magnate Elon Musk considers ESG -- environmental, social, and governance investing or ‘woke’ investing -- to be “the devil.”
Musk was tagged in a Twitter post by Carol Roth who wrote, “Remember when @ElonMusk wanted to bring free speech to Twitter and then S&P removed Tesla from their ESG 500 index, but kept in Exxon?”
“ESG is business social credit,” she added. “It’s a means to control capital, keep business people in line with the narrative, and, ultimately, control you.”
ESG is the devil
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) November 27, 2022
To which Musk responded, “ESG is the devil.”
In a related news story, the New York Post said, “Earlier this year, Tesla was removed from the S&P 500’s ESG index. S&P Dow Jones Indices’ senior director and head of ESG indices Margaret Dorn said in a May blog post that Tesla was no longer eligible for inclusion in the index because its S&P DPJ ESG score had fallen into the bottom 25% of its global industry group peers despite remaining ‘fairly stable’ year over year.”
The Post added, “Factors that contributed to Tesla’s lower score include its lack of ‘low carbon energy and codes of business conduct.’”
In March 2022, the Harvard Business Review reported, “Researchers at Columbia University and London School of Economics compared the ESG record of U.S. companies in 147 ESG fund portfolios and that of U.S. companies in 2,428 non-ESG portfolios. They found that the companies in the ESG portfolios had worse compliance records for both labor and environmental rules. They also found that companies added to ESG portfolios did not subsequently improve compliance with labor or environmental regulations.”
In sum, The Review said, “funds investing in companies that publicly embrace ESG sacrifice financial returns without gaining much, if anything, in terms of actually furthering ESG interests.”