The E.S.G. Fight Has Come to This: Bankers Suing Lawyers

Mr. Cameron, a Republican, just so happens to be running for governor. But it is his partner in enforcement, Ms. Ball, who accuses the other side of playing politics, even as she issues pronouncements that read like something from a candidate.In a news release this year, Ms. Ball’s office said she had long fought E.S.G. “schemes” that “prioritize political goals above financial returns.”

But as the law and its loophole allow, it is those very investment returns, and the proper stewardship of state money generally, that are of primary concern when you are a government employee who is duty bound to act in the best interest of the people you serve. Any process that supports such actions is well worth enacting.

So what is E.S.G., anyway? As investors rename their firms and their funds in a race to ride the E.S.G. wave, cynics see the debate over the term’s definition as degenerating into everyone seeing gibberish. Because funds can define E.S.G. nearly any way they want, they have come to resemble an extra-strange goulash. Sometimes, these new or newly rebranded operations are just elegantly simple greenwashing and nothing more.

To prudent portfolio stewards of everything from retirement investments to housing — that’s you, I hope, and me — an E.S.G. filter is simply good risk management, just as looking at international economic or demographic trends can be. Keeping an eye on how climate change may affect a stock holding (or the place for a retirement home), or whether a board is made up mainly of white men from fancy colleges, is part of what anyone should consider when picking stocks.

In other red states, this way of thinking is catching on. This month, the Indiana Chamber of Commerce, which is not in the habit of selling itself as a nerve center of wokeitude, tweeted out its “strong opposition” to a proposed anti-E.S.G. bill there.

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/02/24/your-money/anti-esg-investing-kentucky.html