Our False Hopes for Climate Change Mitigation

Those looking for a hopeful, upbeat prediction on our civilization’s capacity to head off climate change will want to skip this article, in which Tariq Fancy (pictured), BlackRock’s former chief investment officer for sustainable investing, says that ESG (Environmental, Social and Governance, aka sustainable) strategies are causing more harm that good re: climate change.  That’s because:

• Most of them are essentially greenwashing.  They fail miserably at getting anywhere near the environmentally therapeutic results they promise, and those responsible for assembling and marketing them are rarely if ever held accountable.

and

• They provide the false promise that the private sector can start to look at long-term returns at the expense of the short-term.  He calls the products of the booming sustainable investing industry “dangerous placebos.”

All this is exacerbated by the shrinking size of government and its regulatory powers.

It’s reminiscent of the quote, which, paraphrased, is: The most dangerous belief about our environmental woes is that somebody else will fix them.