This article was originally published in Newsweek.
Climate activists are pursuing increasingly extreme measures to fight for environmental policy changes. In recent months, activists have vandalized works of art around the world, defaced public and private property, and disrupted Wimbledon.
These protests, sometimes called “eco-vandalism,” have led many to believe climate activists are going too far. A less flashy but perhaps more troubling trend has been the embrace of environmental, social, and governance (ESG) standards, which claim to use investment strategy to address societal challenges but similarly go too far in harming the developing world.
For many policymakers, activists, and investors, inequality is exactly the type of social issue ESGs are meant to address. ESGs, however, foster greater inequality by making the rich richer and the poor poorer. While this may seem counterintuitive, it’s not surprising when we look at data from around the world.
