Apr. 16, 2022
Ladies and Gentlemen, I write today given my concern with new ESG proposals by the US regulators, and accounting oversight organizations. From my perceptive, ESG requirements do more to bring about authoritarian control and siloed profits than to help the climate. Some concerns are listed below in regards to an ESG scoring system: Damages the supply chain Picks winners and losers with some of the winners mining lithium which is much more damaging to the environment than drilling for oil. Includes “social” credit scores in which China is now using with aid of US corporations to identify dissenters for concentration camps violating basic human rights. The ratio of people that will die due to supply chain issues, due to higher prices on oil and siloed profits who might be alive if only a man made crisis was not instigated for a promoted noble cause. ESG is a Trojan Horse. A noble cause disguised as a gallant horse to destroy the economy for mom and pop businesses while building up the big box stores and commodity hedge funds. Better than a pandemic for siloed profits. ESG may clean up Los Angeles air but at the expense of people and supply chains in far away places. There are cleaner alternatives to electric cars, air conditioning, and the electric grid. Natural gas, fuel cells, hydroelectric etc…. but not at the expense of limiting energy. My wife, dog and I survived through the coldest temperatures in 70 years in Texas for three days without electricity, in part, due to “clean” energy. The Earth turns on its axis. Climate changes on its own, such as volcanoes that blot out the Sun and cause much greater climate damage than oil. Apparently, God cannot get a loan with these new measures. Technocrats who have authority to make climate change decisions should be required to drive a semi-truck for a month and make physical deliveries, or farm 500 acres and bring the crop to harvest and market, before they are permitted to vote on climate change issues. Technocrats have little concept of the real world it seems. Clean air, clean water, and clean soil are important, but so is having food on the table. Even technocrats have to eat. Be careful what you wish for. Fertilizer is now extremely expensive which limits food production, largely due to shut down pipelines and not the Russia invasion which makes a convenient excuse as COVID. The only people to get a loan will meet environmental, social and governance standards. Meeting these standards, in particular social standards, are as contrary to the US Constitution that has ever been designed by the World Economic Forum and the regulators. Why are regulators pushing an agenda designed by stakeholders instead of stockholders? Are regulators not to regulate, but appease the systemic banks for their wishes and desires as the OCC appeased systemic banks in the copper market or facilitated the aluminum shuffle as brought out by the Levin Senate hearings in 2012? Over Twenty US States currently have Anti-ESG legislation either passed or in the works. Respectfully, James Hanson Sent from Mail for Windows