Business
US firms like BlackRock are dropping their climate obsession while Europe ramps theirs up
Photo by Thos Robinson/Getty Images for The New York Times
From LifeSiteNews
By David James
As U.S. firms such as BlackRock and JPMorgan Chase continue to distance themselves from the ESG and ‘climate change’ agendas, Europe has been moving aggressively in the opposite direction, suggesting a rift is forming on the global economic landscape.
The climate change debate is usually thought to be focused on scientific analyses of the earth’s atmosphere. But that is only what is on the surface. It is also very much about money and politics and there has been a big shift that looks likely to threaten support for the net zero initiative. It may lead to a deep economic and political rift between the U.S. and Europe.
Estimates of the cost of decarbonizing the economy by 2050 have varied, but it is generally agreed that it is a financial bonanza. Goldman Sachs is at the low end with a modest $80 trillion while Bank of America estimates an extraordinary $275 trillion, about 10 times the current value of the U.S. stock market.
The finance sector, dizzy with the prospect of a huge investment opportunity, imposed a metric on corporations called Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG), a mechanism for demanding that companies go down the net zero route – and also comply with diversity equity and inclusion (DEI) requirements, the “S” part of ESG. Corporations that did not cooperate were threatened with a loss of support in the market and lower relative share prices.
That trend is starting to reverse. BlackRock, JPMorgan Chase, and State Street recently exited from Climate Action 100+, a coalition of the world’s largest institutional investors that pledges to “ensure the world’s largest corporate greenhouse gas emitters take necessary action on climate change.” The passive fund Vanguard, the world’s second largest, exited over a year ago.
These four fund managers oversee assets of about $25 trillion, which is approximately a quarter of the entire funds under management in the world.
They are changing direction for two reasons. First, there was an implicit bargain with ESG, whereby compliant companies would not only get to save the environment but also get to see their share prices outperform non-compliant companies. It is not turning out that way. In fact, better returns have come from investing against ESG-compliant companies.
More compellingly, 16 conservative state attorneys general in the U.S. have demanded answers from BlackRock’s directors regarding the Climate Action and ESG initiatives. Other fund managers and banks have also attracted unwanted scrutiny.
Nothing concentrates the mind of fund managers more than the prospect of clients withdrawing their funds – in this case state government pension money. Larry Fink, chief executive of BlackRock, is now saying he does not think it is helpful to use the term ESG, having been one of the most aggressive advocates. In his 2022 letter to CEOs he was issuing veiled threats to companies not complying with ESG. In 2024, he omitted the term entirely.
Meanwhile in Europe, very different choices are being made. The European Union (EU) is looking to impose sustainability reporting standards on all medium and large businesses. The intention is to have European companies set up a new accounting system by the end of the decade. Rather than recording financial transactions, it will instead aggregate data related to climate, pollution, especially carbon dioxide emissions, biodiversity and social issues.
As one (anonymous) analyst writes: “It is a very detailed control system for European companies where the European Commission can, in the future, dictate anything it wants – and punish for any violations any way it wants. Apart from the crazy regulatory load, this initiative can only be seen as a direct seizure of operational control of European companies, and thereby the European economy.”
So, while the U.S. looks to restore an unsteady version of capitalism, Europe is heading towards some kind of climate-driven socialism.
The EU plan seems to be to eventually direct their banks’ lending, which would radically undermine the region’s free-market system and establish something more like communist-style centralized control.
This does not mean U.S. governments and bureaucrats will stop pushing their climate agenda. A court case brought by the city of Honolulu, for example, is one of several attempts to bankrupt the American energy industry. But when the big institutional money changes direction then corporations and governments eventually follow.
The situation is further complicated by the emergence of the expanded BRICS alliance, which will soon represent a bigger proportion of the world economy than the G7. Saudi Arabia, Iran, United Arab Emirates, Ethiopia and Egypt will be added to the original group of Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa.
The BRICS nations will not allow the West’s climate change agenda to reshape their polities. Most of them are either sellers or heavy consumers of fossil fuels. Both India and China are increasing their use of coal, for instance, which makes Western attempts to reduce emissions largely pointless.
The promise that hundreds of trillions of investment opportunities would come from converting to net zero was always just a financial projection, mere speculation. The scale of transiting to a decarbonized economy would be so enormous it would inevitably become a logistical nightmare, if not an impossibility.
Energy expenditure represents about an eighth of the world’s GDP. Oil, natural gas and coal still provide 84 percent of the world’s energy, down just two per cent from 20 years ago. Production of renewable energy has increased but so has overall consumption. Oil powers 97 percent of all transportation.
Relying solely on renewable energy was never realistic and now that the financial dynamic is changing the prospects of achieving net zero have become even more remote. As the finance website ZeroHedge opines: “Both the DEI and ESG gravy trains on Wall Street are finally coming to an unceremonious end.” Financial markets continually get seduced by fads; the ESG agenda is starting to look like yet another example.
Business
Premiers fight to lower gas taxes as Trudeau hikes pump costs
From the Canadian Taxpayers Federation
By Jay Goldberg
Thirty-nine hundred dollars – that’s how much the typical two-car Ontario family is spending on gas taxes at the pump this year.
You read that right. That’s not the overall fuel bill. That’s just taxes.
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau keeps increasing your gas bill, while Premier Doug Ford is lowering it.
Ford’s latest gas tax cut extension is music to taxpayers’ ears. Ford’s 6.4 cent per litre gas tax cut, temporarily introduced in July 2022, is here to stay until at least next June.
Because of the cut, a two-car family has saved more than $1,000 so far. And that’s welcome news for Ontario taxpayers, because Trudeau is planning yet another carbon tax hike next April.
Trudeau has raised the overall tax burden at the pumps every April for the past five years. Next spring, he plans to raise gas taxes by another three cents per litre, bringing the overall gas tax burden for Ontarians to almost 60 cents per litre.
While Trudeau keeps hiking costs for taxpayers at the pumps, premiers of all stripes have been stepping up to the plate to blunt the impact of his punitive carbon tax.
Obviously, Ford has stepped up to the plate and has lowered gas taxes. But he’s not alone.
In Manitoba, NDP Premier Wab Kinew fully suspended the province’s 14 cent per litre gas tax for a year. And in Newfoundland, Liberal Premier Andrew Furey cut the gas tax by 8.05 cents per litre for nearly two-and-a-half years.
It’s a tale of two approaches: the Trudeau government keeps making life more expensive at the pumps, while premiers of all stripes are fighting to get costs down.
Families still have to get to work, get the kids to school and make it to hockey practice. And they can’t afford increasingly high gas taxes. Common sense premiers seem to get it, while Ottawa has its head in the clouds.
When Ford announced his gas tax cut extension, he took aim at the Liberal carbon tax mandated by the Trudeau government in Ottawa.
Ford noted the carbon tax is set to rise to 20.9 cents per litre next April, “bumping up the cost of everything once again and it’s absolutely ridiculous.”
“Our government will always fight against it,” Ford said.
But there’s some good news for taxpayers: reprieve may be on the horizon.
Federal Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre’s promises to axe the carbon tax as soon as he takes office.
With a federal election scheduled for next fall, the federal carbon tax’s days may very well be numbered.
Scrapping the carbon tax would make a huge difference in the lives of everyday Canadians.
Right now, the carbon tax costs 17.6 cents per litre. For a family filling up two cars once a week, that’s nearly $24 a week in carbon taxes at the pump.
Scrapping the carbon tax could save families more than $1,200 a year at the pumps. Plus, there would be savings on the cost of home heating, food, and virtually everything else.
While the Trudeau government likes to argue that the carbon tax rebates make up for all these additional costs, the Parliamentary Budget Officer says it’s not so.
The PBO has shown that the typical Ontario family will lose nearly $400 this year due to the carbon tax, even after the rebates.
That’s why premiers like Ford, Kinew and Furey have stepped up to the plate.
Canadians pay far too much at the pumps in taxes. While Trudeau hikes the carbon tax year after year, provincial leaders like Ford are keeping costs down and delivering meaningful relief for struggling families.
Agriculture
Sweeping ‘pandemic prevention’ bill would give Trudeau government ability to regulate meat production
From LifeSiteNews
Bill C-293, ‘An Act respecting pandemic prevention and preparedness,’ gives sweeping powers to the federal government in the event of a crisis, including the ability to regulate meat production.
The Trudeau Liberals’ “pandemic prevention and preparedness” bill is set to become law despite concerns raised by Conservative senators that the sweeping powers it gives government, particularly over agriculture, have many concerned.
Bill C-293, or “An Act respecting pandemic prevention and preparedness,” is soon to pass its second reading in the Senate, which all but guarantees it will become law. Last Tuesday in the Senate, Conservative senators’ calls for caution on the bill seemed to fall on deaf ears.
“Being from Saskatchewan I have heard from many farmers who are very concerned about this bill. Now we hear quite a short second reading speech that doesn’t really address some of those major concerns they have about the promotion of alternative proteins and about the phase-out, as Senator Plett was saying, of some of their very livelihoods,” said Conservative Senator Denise Batters during debate of the bill.
Batters asked one of the bill’s proponents, Senator Marie-Françoise Mégie, how they will “alleviate those concerns for them other than telling them that they can come to committee, perhaps — if the committee invites them — and have their say there so that they don’t have to worry about their livelihoods being threatened?”
In response, Mégie replied, “We have to invite the right witnesses and those who will speak about their industry, what they are doing and their concerns. Then we can find solutions with them, and we will do a thorough analysis of the issue. This was done intentionally, and I can provide all these details later. If I shared these details now, I would have to propose solutions myself and I do not have those solutions. I purposely did not present them.”
Bill C-293 was introduced to the House of Commons in the summer of 2022 by Liberal MP Nathaniel Erskine-Smith. The House later passed the bill in June of 2024 with support from the Liberals and NDP (New Democratic Party), with the Conservatives and Bloc Quebecois opposing it.
Bill C-293 would amend the Department of Health Act to allow the minister of health to appoint a “National pandemic prevention and preparedness coordinator from among the officials of the Public Health Agency of Canada to coordinate the activities under the Pandemic Prevention and Preparedness Act.”
It would also, as reported by LifeSiteNews, allow the government to mandate industry help it in procuring products relevant to “pandemic preparedness, including vaccines, testing equipment and personal protective equipment, and the measures that the Minister of Industry intends to take to address any supply chain gaps identified.”
A close look at this bill shows that, if it becomes law, it would allow the government via officials of the Public Health Agency of Canada, after consulting the Minister of Agriculture and Agri-Food and of Industry and provincial governments, to “regulate commercial activities that can contribute to pandemic risk, including industrial animal agriculture.”
Text from the bill also states that the government would be able to “promote commercial activities that can help reduce pandemic risk,” which includes the “production of alternative proteins, and phase out commercial activities that disproportionately contribute to pandemic risk, including activities that involve high-risk species.”
The bill has been blasted by the Alberta government, who warned that it could “mandate the consumption of vegetable proteins by Canadians” as well as allow the “the federal government to tell Canadians what they can eat.”
As reported by LifeSiteNews, the Trudeau government has funded companies that produce food made from bugs. The World Economic Forum, a globalist group with links to the Trudeau government, has as part of its Great Reset agenda the promotion of “alternative” proteins such as insects to replace or minimize the consumption of beef, pork, and other meats that they say have high “carbon” footprints.
Trudeau’s current environmental goals are in lockstep with the United Nations’ “2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development” and include phasing out coal-fired power plants, reducing fertilizer usage, and curbing natural gas use over the coming decades, as well as curbing red meat and dairy consumption.
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