Tobacco companies lead the ESG pack while electric vehicle giant Tesla languishes near the bottom because it won’t toe the woke line, exposing the ‘ethical’ ESG scheme as a virtue-signalling racket, say critics. The Washington Free Beacon has more.
S&P Global made headlines this month when it gave Tesla, the world’s largest manufacturer of electric cars, a lower environmental, social and governance score than Philip Morris International, the maker of Marlboro cigarettes.
The electric car company, whose CEO, Elon Musk, has become a culture-war lightning rod, earned just 37 points on the 100-point scale compared with the cigarette giant’s 84.
ESG ratings are supposed to guide investors, and their money, toward ethical enterprises. But Big Tobacco has lapped Tesla in the ESG ratings race more than once: Sustainalytics, a widely used ESG ratings tool, gives Tesla a worse score than Altria, one of the largest tobacco producers in the world. And the London Stock Exchange gives British American Tobacco an ESG score of 94 — the third highest of any company on the exchange’s top share index — while Tesla earns a middling 65.
How could cigarettes, which kill over eight million people each year, be deemed a more ethical investment than electric cars? It may have something to do with the tobacco industry’s embrace of corporate progressivism.
Companies like Altria have gone out of their way to emphasise the diversity of their corporate boards and the breadth of their social justice initiatives, from funding minority businesses to promoting transgender women in sports. But Tesla, whose executives are overwhelmingly white men, has resisted that bandwagon, going so far as to fire its top LGBT diversity officer last year.
The ‘S’ in ESG typically includes diversity programs. Philip Morris International, which in 2021 advertised a partnership with “African data scientists,” got a social score of 84 from S&P Global. Tesla got a measly 20.
The contrast highlights the hazards of a movement that lumps pressing health and environmental issues in with ideological fads. Early ESG efforts were laser-focused on ‘sin stocks’ — companies whose core business was deemed immoral — including tobacco. But as ESG investing has ballooned, so has the number of variables used in ESG ratings, which now encompass everything from labor practices and carbon pledges to diversity trainings and human rights. That has created countless opportunities to game the system, experts say, and lets even the most sordid companies score points — and investors — by toeing the progressive line.
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It highlights the fact that making money trumps everything. Isn’t that right, pharma companies?
”Run to the hills…run for your lives!”
Yes they’re throwing everything plus the kitchen sink at us here. This actually reads like a comedy, honestly;
”A virus that kills one person every second is highly likely to be heading to the UK thanks to climate change, according to scientists. The UK Government has been warned about Crimean-Congo haemorrhagic fever (CCHF), which has a mortality rate of up to 40% and is spread by ticks or animal tissue.
CCHF is on the World Health Organisation’s list of ‘priority’ diseases, and it’s found in eastern Europe and now France. Other diseases the Uk has been warned to look out for include deadly Rift Valley fever, Zika, and ‘breakbone’ fever.
Warmer weather will allow the disease to spread to the UK, according to the WHO.
He stated: “There are broadly two (points), one is that the insect vectors will move, greatly increasing the range of their habitat because of climate change and we are seeing that.
“From a European perspective, the insects are spreading more north and then the viruses that they carry tend to follow.
“Alternatively there are examples like blue tongue virus which we had in 2007 where the virus is brought in by some other route and the vectors we have are competent for those viruses.
“So these two things we have to understand, the spread and the increased risk of these viral infections because of the slow march north of the vectors.”
https://www.walesonline.co.uk/news/uk-news/virus-kills-one-person-second-27125449
You’ve got to laugh! How does this sit with the germ vs terrain theory of disease?
Or will it be all the crap processed foods, the God only knows what been sprayed on us via chemtrails, the MSM Fear Virus, pharma or 5G which triggers this? Or a combination of them all?
If disease is insect borne, it’s parasites. Guess what works? Ivermectin… There are numerous other herbal remedies to cleanse the body of parasites, which we are all host to.
Remember those gifts of gold, frankincense & myrrh from the Magi? The latter two being as desirable as gold? It’s because both of them cleanse the body of parasites & support the body to heal.
Firkin hell Mogs. I might need me big coat.
And an ‘at.
To enable everyone to enjoy the marvellous climax of this supsense-laden story without having to endure all the advertising:
“We don’t know what is going to arrive until it does,” he [Professor J. Woord] stated.
A truly expertly insight into our dangerously climate-changed future: We have no firkin’ idea what’s going to happen! Well, neither do I. I would offer I don’t know what’s going to happen in future! sound bites at half the rate of the good professor, though, and mine are just as good as his. Bargain!
“By some other route” could that be via things that float made of Rubber !!..
Well that’s a turn up for the books…The Syrian psychopath who targeted kids and stabbed them in a playground in France was not a Christian but a refugee Muslim.
”Here is what is circulating from Syrians living in France and Germany who recognized the madman of Allah. And this was confirmed by relatives of Father Boulad in Alexandria…
From the beginning we said that it cannot be a Christian… and that it has the signs of being done by a Muslim…
The assailant is said to be a Syrian refugee named Selwan Majd…
He claimed his name was Abd El-Messih Hanoun, but his real name is “Selwan Majd,” a refugee from Al-Hasakah in northern Syria.
He had traveled to Turkey with false papers where he met a Swedish tourist and made her believe he was a Muslim convert to Christianity.
He married her in Sweden under the false Christian name, but the Swedish authorities doubted him and refused to grant him citizenship, later his wife separated from him.”
https://www.jihadwatch.org/2023/06/france-christian-who-stabbed-children-on-playground-turns-out-to-be-a-muslim-named-selwan-majd
I must say, if you haven’t ever checked out the above website, jihadwatch.org, it’s very interesting. Some of the stories are obviously horrendous, and most we don’t even hear about because they happen in far off lands, such as African nations and India, but Robert Spencer, who set up the site, has quite the credentials and knowledge when it comes to all things Islam. Very impressive when you consider he isn’t even a Muslim. I’m actually surprised he hasn’t been issued with a fatwa like Rushdie. Anyway, here he is speaking in a 7min video about the attack in France. The latest news on the kids from here in the NL is that they’d been operated on and were stable, but that was several days ago.
https://www.jihadwatch.org/2023/06/video-robert-spencer-with-emerald-robinson-on-the-syrian-migrants-attack-in-france
Nightmare ! Any news on the Nottingham attacker ?
BlackRock, Vanguard and State Street, along with a couple of others form a controlling shareholding bloc in 90 per cent of Fortune 500 companies. They need as little as 20 per cent to be the largest bloc and Larry Fink admitted in an interview that his company (BlackRock) and the others were intimidating businesses to change their ‘culture.’
Even if they deal in child porn, as long as the companies do the LGBTQIA+, and DIE bit, they’ll get the ESG rating, which impacts bonuses for CEOs, among other things.
Since Ronald Reagan allowed the investment banks to proxy vote on behalf of smaller shareholders – which was done with the best of intentions at the time to give the smaller shareholders a supposed say – the banks have seized control of most major businesses, even alleged rivals, manipulating management by using ESG scores as a way to threaten business’s line of credit. And the hapless shareholders’ money is effectively held ransom, because woke stakeholder capitalism is tanking the share value, meaning people can’t afford to ditch their shares.
Check out the major institutional stockholders for the below businesses and see why all we see on TV and in the media are lies, promoting weird agendas and why all the big corporations sing from the same hymn sheet… This isn’t including the mutual fund holdings which further increase the control…
Philip Morris International
Vanguard Group, Inc 8.73%
Capital World Investors 7.20%
Capital International Investors 6.78%
Blackrock Inc 6.08%
State Street Corporation 3.66%
Fox
Vanguard Group, Inc. 6.93%
Dodge & Cox 4.95%
Blackrock Inc 4.59%
Yacktman Asset Management 3.71%
State Street Corporation 3.21%
Nomura Holdings Inc. 2.29%
Warner Bros Discovery (CNN owners)
Vanguard Group, Inc. 8.81%
Blackrock Inc 6.71%
State Street Corporation 4.51%
Comcast (CNBC owners)
Vanguard Group, Inc 9.47%
Blackrock Inc 7.60%
Capital International Investors 4.51%
State Street Corporation 3.78%
Alphabet (incl Google)
Vanguard Group, Inc. 7.14%
Blackrock Inc 6.23%
State Street Corporation 3.27%
Meta (incl Facebook)
Vanguard Group, Inc 8.18%
Blackrock Inc. 6.91%
State Street Corporation 3.93%
Twitter (until July last year)
Vanguard Group, Inc 10.3%
Blackrock Inc 6.5%
Morgan Stanley 8.4%
State Street Corporation 4.78%
Elon Musk was also gobbling up shares as part of his bid
Disney
Vanguard Group, Inc 8.11%
Blackrock Inc 6.65%
State Street Corporation 3.87%
Morgan Stanley 2.45%
Apple
Vanguard Group 8.33%
Blackrock Inc. 6.58%
Berkshire Hathaway, Inc 5.82%
State Street Corporation 3.66%
Microsoft Corporation
Vanguard Group, Inc 8.74%
Blackrock Inc 7.23%
State Street Corporation 3.93%
Procter & Gamble
Vanguard Group, Inc 9.56%
Blackrock Inc 6.87%
State Street Corporation 4.34%
Coca Cola
Berkshire Hathaway, Inc 9.25%
Vanguard Group, Inc 8.56%
Blackrock Inc 7.20%
State Street Corporation 3.92%
Ford Motor Co
Vanguard Group, Inc 8.59%
Blackrock Inc 7.20%
State Street Corporation 4.16%
General Motors Company
Blackrock Inc 9.10%
Vanguard Group, Inc 7.91%
State Street Corporation 4.10%
Molson Coors
Dodge & Cox Inc 14.04%
Vanguard Group, Inc 11.02%
Blackrock Inc 7.66%
State Street Corporation 4.16%
Kellogg Company
Kellogg W K Foundation Trust 16.14%
Blackrock Inc 9.25%
Vanguard Group, Inc 9.07%
Keybank National Association 6.02%
State Street Corporation 3.84%
Crikey.
Moderna
Baillie Gifford and Company 12.19%
Vanguard Group, Inc 7.22%
Blackrock Inc 6.58%
State Street Corporation 3.69%
Pfizer
Vanguard Group, Inc 9.01%
Blackrock Inc 7.89%
State Street Corporation 4.99%
Capital World Investors 4.10%
Johnson & Johnson
Vanguard Group, Inc 9.50%
Blackrock Inc 7.75%
State Street Corporation 5.40%
Remove the proxy voting rights and woke capitalism dies.
Well highlighted Dom !
Seconded.
It’s another version of Carbon Credits.
I don’t consider resource intensive transportation for middle class people to be particularly ethical or moral.
Am I the only person to have noticed the striking similarities between claims about the health risks of tobacco and climate change. In both cases the fight is portrayed as being between the plucky little guy and evil, corporations (big tobacco and big oil) who deny settled science and continue to mark a product they’ve known for decades to be harmful. I’m not sure of the quality of the science that is said to show a link between smoking and poor health, but covid and climate change have shown how hard it is for scientists who have good evidence that goes against the consensus to get published rather than smeared. In the days before the internet it would’ve been even harder for anyone not agreeing that smoking is dangerous to find a way of being listened to. It’s also obvious that the same do gooders who want ever tighter controls on people’s freedom to buy and smoke cigarettes are the same people who want to remove people’s freedom to buy meat, petrol or diesel cars, foreign holidays etc. Banning things and controlling people clearly appeals to a certain mindset and I wonder if before climate change was thought up they started off with cigarettes. I’m not saying that smoking is guaranteed to be safe, but I no longer trust anything the establishment says and am therefore sceptical that tobacco is one of the great evils of the modern world.
As John Ward states on his blog from The Gambia – IABATO aka It’s All Bollocks And That’s Official .
Environmental and Social Governance is a framework to control the entire economy based on Liberal Progressive values of Diversity Equality Race Gender and Climate. Individuals and corporations will be given scores which will decide who can and who cannot do business.eg Trump will not be allowed to, because ofcourse of his anti climate change world view and withdrawal from the Paris Agreement. Individuals are being banned and censored and companies who do not comply will have their opportunities to do business curtailed. Which is why the likes of Bud Light, Nike, Unilever etc all jumping through diversity and equality hoops because they fear missing out in the marketplace. Notice how every TV advert you see has a white husband and black wife or vice versa and far larger proportion of minorities in them than actually occurs in the real world, because social justice appearances matter. They may lose customers in the short term but they think that in the long term they will benefit. Companies who do not comply will be indulging in “Hate Speech” or “Misinformation” The WEF website features information on how Tech Companies can “combat hate speech”, which means any kind of speech that questions government policy on eg pandemics and vaccines, or climate dogma and policies. ESG is effectively a purge of everything and everybody that is not a woke Liberal Progressive or anyone who dares to question the 5 main political agenda’s of Equality Diversity Race Gender and Climate. ————-“To achieve a better outcome, the world must act jointly and swiftly to revamp all aspects of our societies and economies from education and social contracts and working conditions. In short we need a reset of capitalism” –Klaus Schwabb, World Economic Forum.
My employer (a canadian company) is about to go through it’s annual performance appraisal process. We have to justify our worth to our project, business unit, the company as a whole and, thanks to ESG, the world at large. I’ve had enough of it. I’m thinking of pointing out that as the employer of almost 100,000 people worldwide we already make an awesome contribution to society and that expecting it’s employees to engage in CSR and ESG activities to make the company look good is actually the opposite of how a good employer behaves.