While the Biden administration preserves federal ESG laws, many states are fighting back | Just The News

While efforts to push back against environment, social and governance (ESG) policies, on the federal level have run into barriers, many state legislatures are chipping away at it.

ESG rates companies on various markers of progressive-friendly policies related to protecting the environment, diversity in the workplace and community relations. This package of goals is held secondary to shareholder value. Any association with fossil fuel industries quickly gets a fund rated down, but timber industries and gun manufacturing have also faced pressure from the movement.

For state governments especially those whose revenues and economies are heavily weighted toward fossil fuels doing business with investment institutions holding anti-fossil fuel ESG policies is shooting themselves in the foot.

For them to manage our tax dollars while at the same time, through ESG activity, they’re trying to diminish those dollars because they don’t want those companies to exist that’s a conflict of interest, West Virginia Treasurer Riley Moore told Just The News. According to the U.S. Energy Information Administration, in 2022, West Virginia was the second-largest coal producer in the nation, after Wyoming, and accounted for 14% of U.S. total coal production.

via justthenews.com