Pirate's Cove

It’s all fun and games when you think you’re Doing Something for the Earth, both because you want to look good (for insane cultists) and because you are kinda forced to do it by politicians. There comes a point when this makes no financial sense, kinda like how the yutes have realized that ordering delivery every day for most meals is a a Bad Idea, and now they’re on to Hamburger Helper

How Wall Street Turned Its Back on Climate Change

In January 2020, Larry Fink, the chief executive of BlackRock, the largest asset manager in the world, stunned the business world by declaring that he intended to use the trillions of dollars managed by his firm to address global warming.

“Every government, company, and shareholder must confront climate change,” Mr. Fink wrote, calling for “a fundamental reshaping of finance.”

A few days later, Mr. Fink arrived in Davos, Switzerland, for the World Economic Forum’s annual gathering, donning a scarf featuring a design of the “warming stripes,” a pattern that depicts 150 years of rising global temperatures.

Mr. Fink’s impassioned call to address climate change was the unofficial start of a movement. Nearly every major financial institution was soon pledging to reduce emissions, joining high-minded alliances designed to phase out fossil fuels and promising to support clean energy. Environmental, social and governance factors, known as E.S.G., became a defining feature of Wall Street investing.

Alas, the money and willpower and caring seems to have ended

But six years later, many of those Wall Street institutions have walked back or abandoned their commitments.

The alliances — like the Net-Zero Banking Alliance and the Net-Zero Asset Managers initiative — that were meant to steer investments toward clean energy and away from fossil fuels have largely fallen apart. Investors have withdrawn tens of billions of dollars each quarter from E.S.G. funds.

While U.S. investment in clean energy has boomed in recent years — reaching $279 billion last year — many large corporations have gone silent on climate change. On company earnings calls, mentions of words like climate and sustainability have plunged by 75 percent over the past year, according to a Bloomberg analysis.

And with President Trump back in office and using the presidency to promote fossil fuels and attack the clean energy industry, Wall Street’s retreat from climate action has coincided with American banks doubling down on coal, oil and gas projects.

The idea of all these companies and such are to make money. Are they making money off “green” energy and all the other stuff? The answer is apparently “no”. Anyhow, the rest of the article is a deep dive into how the climate investment scam rose and then fell. Oh, well, too bad.