Last month, I reported on attempts to broaden the definition of ESG, so that investors in weapons systems could sleep easy at night knowing that the stock they were buying was helping turn Russians into pink mist on Ukraine’s front lines. Labour MPs were urging financial institutions to broaden the definition of ‘ethical’ to encompass things that those in the woke investment sphere, such as the Cooperative Bank, used to regard as ‘unethical’. Half-joking, I pointed out that if the definition of ‘ethical’ could be stretched to include bomb-makers, it could surely be allowed to include Big Oil. Reality was not far behind.
Last week, according to CNBC, executives at Goldman Sachs began pleading with investors “to re-evaluate their approach to oil and gas companies”. As has been widely reported, the last year or so has seen financial institutions in the USA and Canada reverse out of ‘alliances’ on Net Zero, mostly founded, at least ceremonially, at the COP26 climate meeting in Glasgow, back in 2021. These alliances were convened by Mark Carney – now the unelected Canadian PM – and supported by the offices of eco-billionaire Michael Bloomberg. Announcing the deals, then Chancellor of the Exchequer Rishi Sunak took the stage following Carney’s presentation on money to declare that firms with $130 trillion of assets under management were now committed to Net Zero.
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Seen at a petrol station in Ireland all of 15 years ago
Drill baby, drill!
Not ethics that lifted the developed world out if medievalism and feudal squalor, but industry, inventiveness and ingenuity – facilitated by reliable and affordable energy and deployment of capital.
Even the financial geniuses of Goldman Sachs now forced to admit it. Sooner or later, physics, engineering and economics trump wishful thinking and fake piety every time.
“You think man can destroy the planet? What intoxicating vanity.”
Michael Crichton (1942 – 2008)
“In the same way that the sentiment on defence companies has changed with the Russia-Ukraine war,” Michele Della Vigna, head of EMEA natural resources research at Goldman Sachs, tells reporters, “I think the sentiment on ownership of oil and gas should change.”
Does she read the Daily Sceptic? If the Russia-Ukraine war shows us the folly of ‘ethics’ in the midst of an ‘existential crisis’, I argued, then “coal, gas and oil are no lesser solutions to existential crises of hunger, cold and poverty that are caused by high prices”
Folly it is…..and its still going on……
‘Matt Williams, chief executive of Brigantes, a military equipment company said: “[We] have faced significant challenges securing banking support and funding lines..’
https://inews.co.uk/news/politics/defence-firms-blocked-from-banking-urgent-help-reeves-3649165?srsltid=AfmBOorNR37OdFo3qqqnfLk_s6W1bhMpKxdgrV_JnC7ylTkjqbaZ-GOI
‘banks are “severely limited” from financing defence companies due to regulations and internal policies’
‘Sébastien de Brouwer, deputy CEO of the European Banking Federation, acknowledges that there may be some issues on the SME side for defence companies.’
https://www.thebanker.com/content/2c911b23-0eea-4931-aca0-250011c06439
An ethical foreign/trade policy is a first world luxury that is great until the strange looking bloke with his tattooed mates knocks on your door with a bazooka and a collecting box. You look behind you for ‘our lads’…….aucune! We’ve been here before……..
Large scale deregulation of business in general, particularly within the export sector, is required.
Britain’s 1990 trade regulatory framework would be a good place to start.
It’s in fact a He, pronounced Mikele, prompted by your excellent entry I looked him up – fascinating background and memberships.
ESG and the “Green Agenda” have nothing to do with ethics.
They are about central planning.
It’s communism by the back door..
Communism isn’t about ethics either. It’s about people with a collectivist mindset (i.e. tyrants and busybodies) wanting to control those around them.
Nailed it.
Arguably Ethics, Philosophy, Economics and Politics are all part of our efforts to simplify the world and make it more predictable.
But eventually they all hit the ‘Ideology Gap’ where our simplifications smack into the events of reality. A useful exercise is to consider how many and how convoluted the ‘excuses’ are – especially as people rarely give up a prized belief for they would sooner try and bend reality to fit their ideas.
So, so true.
Most of us have a really strong bias against changing our minds. In evolutionary terms, there must be a significant benefit to it.
Given its governance history and its support for socialism I am surprised the CooP Bank is itself regarded as ethical.
Those managing funds on behalf of others are required in the absence of anything that limits their investments to produce the best return for their investors or face prosecution. The fact that ‘green’ investments have tanked with the latest to hit the buffers being hydrogen plants fund managers are bound to be moving away from them if they value their freedom.
Green ethics. Two mutually exclusive words.
Didn’t Joseph-Ignace Guillotin develop his contraption to enable ‘ethical’ executions?
They never had any bloody ethics. They are the most unpleasant and snobbish of people without being in possession of anything to be snobby about. There is a forbidden form of masturbation that is seldom talked about called the tickling of the uvula. It is where by yogic practices you learn you curl your tongue around so that the tip can tickle the little strip of flesh hanging down at the back of your mouth. The sensations are exquisite, far higher than anything sexual. Complete self-indulgence and rightfully shunned. These people have masturbated themselves into high heaven and with the corporate backing of the last three decades that are spaffing all over you.
This article is worth reading just for the quote – “Either way, what we see now is the crumbling of ‘ethics’, and the crumbling of the prostitution racket of ‘ethical investment’, as reality dawns.”
A brilliantly reasoned argument, making the point, so rarely raised, that ethics are not necessarily a Good Thing. An enjoyable and thought-provoking read.
Many excellent points in this article, as ever from Ben. We ought to remember though that not ALL green energy “remains far more expensive”. Hydroelectric power has been widely used across the world for commercial not econut reasons. Even in Britain we have some hydroelectric – it has been quietly humming along at 1-3% of our electricity for at least the last 50 years, since long before net zero had even been invented.
Another example is waste to energy plants. There is a strong case for disposing of refuse by incinerating it and generating electricity in the process.
And of course in hot countries with reliable sunshine and wide expanse of deserts, solar power may well be sensible.
Our aim needs to be an energy system that provides the energy people need, reliably and at the lowest cost, and sometimes, just sometimes, that will happen to be using one green form of energy or another.