From the Daily Caller News Foundation

By David Blackmon

The chances of achieving the goal of net-zero by 2050 are basically net zero

Just a few years ago, ESG was all the rage in the banking and investing community as globalist governments in the western world focused on a failing attempt to subsidize an energy transition into reality. The strategy was to try to strangle fossil fuel industries by denying them funding for major projects, with major ESG-focused institutional investors like BlackRock and State Street, and big banks like J.P. Morgan and Goldman Sachs leveraging their control of trillions of dollars in capital to lead the cause.

But a funny thing happened on the way to a green Nirvana: It turned out that the chosen rent-seeking industries — wind, solar and electric vehicles — are not the nifty plug-and-play solutions they had been cracked up to be.

Even worse, the advancement of new technologies and increased mining of cryptocurrencies created enormous new demand for electricity, resulting in heavy new demand for finding new sources of fossil fuels to keep the grid running and people moving around in reliable cars.

In other words, reality butted into the green narrative, collapsing the foundations of the ESG movement. The laws of physics, thermodynamics and unanticipated consequences remain laws, not mere suggestions.

Making matters worse for the ESG giants, Texas and other states passed laws disallowing any of these firms who use ESG principles to discriminate against their important oil, gas and coal industries from investing in massive state-governed funds. BlackRock and others were hit with sanctions by Texas in 2023. More recently, Texas and 10 other states sued Blackrock and other big investment houses for allegedly violating anti-trust laws.

As the foundations of the ESG movement collapse, so are some of the institutions that sprang up around it. The United Nations created one such institution, the “Net Zero Asset Managers Initiative,” whose participants maintain pledges to reach net-zero emissions by 2050 and adhere to detailed plans to reach that goal.

The problem with that is there is now a growing consensus that a) the forced march to a green energy transition isn’t working and worse, that it can’t work, and b) the chances of achieving the goal of net-zero by 2050 are basically net zero. There is also a rising consensus among energy companies of a pressing need to prioritize matters of energy security over nebulous emissions reduction goals that most often constitute poor deployments of capital. Even as the Biden administration has ramped up regulations and subsidies to try to force its transition, big players like ExxonMobil, Chevron, BP, and Shell have all redirected larger percentages of their capital budgets away from investments in carbon reduction projects back into their core oil-and-gas businesses.

The result of this confluence of factors and events has been a recent rush by big U.S. banks and investment houses away from this UN-run alliance. In just the last two weeks, the parade away from net zero was led by major banks like Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, Citigroup, Bank of America, Wells Fargo, and, most recently, JP Morgan. On Thursday, the New York Post reported that both BlackRock and State Street, a pair of investment firms who control trillions of investor dollars (BlackRock alone controls more than $10 trillion) are on the brink of joining the flood away from this increasingly toxic philosophy.

In June, 2023, BlackRock CEO Larry Fink made big news when told an audience at the Aspen Ideas Festival in Aspen, Colorado that he is “ashamed of being part of this [ESG] conversation.” He almost immediately backed away from that comment, restating his dedication to what he called “conscientious capitalism.” The takeaway for most observers was that Fink might stop using the term ESG in his internal and external communications but would keep right on engaging in his discriminatory practices while using a different narrative to talk about it.

But this week’s news about BlackRock and the other big firms feels different. Much has taken place in the energy space over the last 18 months, none of it positive for the energy transition or the net-zero fantasy. Perhaps all these big banks and investment funds are awakening to the reality that it will take far more than devising a new way of talking about the same old nonsense concepts to repair the damage that has already been done to the world’s energy system.

David Blackmon is an energy writer and consultant based in Texas. He spent 40 years in the oil and gas business, where he specialized in public policy and communications.

From the Fraser Institute

By Ben Eisen

In the days following Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s resignation as leader of the Liberal Party, there has been much ink spilt about his legacy. One effusively positive review of Trudeau’s tenure claimed that his successors “will be hard-pressed to improve on his economic track record.”

But this claim is difficult to square with the historical record, which shows the economic story of the Trudeau years has been one of dismal growth. Indeed, when the growth performance of Canada’s economy is properly measured, Trudeau has the worst record of any prime minister in recent history.

There’s no single perfect measure of economic success. However, growth in inflation-adjusted per-person GDP—an indicator of living standards and incomes—remains an important and broad measure. In short, it measures how quickly the economy is growing while adjusting for inflation and population growth.

Back when he was first running for prime minister in 2015, Trudeau recognized the importance of long-term economic growth, often pointing to slow growth under his predecessor Stephen Harper. On the campaign trail, Trudeau blasted Harper for having the “worst record on economic growth since R.B. Bennett in the depths of the Great Depression.”

And growth during the Harper years was indeed slow. The Harper government endured the 2008/09 global financial crisis and subsequent weak recovery, particularly in Ontario. During Harper’s tenure as prime minister, per-person GDP growth was 0.5 per cent annually—which is lower than his predecessors Brian Mulroney (0.8 per cent) and Jean Chrétien (2.4 per cent).

So, growth was weak under Harper, but Trudeau misdiagnosed the causes. Shortly after taking office, Trudeau said looser fiscal policy—with more spending, borrowing and bigger deficits—would help spur growth in Canada (and indeed around the world).

Trudeau’s government acted on this premise, boosting spending and running deficits—but Trudeau’s approach did not move the needle on growth. In fact, things went from bad to worse. Annual per-person GDP growth under Trudeau (0.3 per cent) was even worse than under Harper.

The reasons for weak economic growth (under Harper and Trudeau) are complicated. But when it comes to performance, there’s no disputing that Trudeau’s record is worse than any long-serving prime minister in recent history. According to our recent study published by the Fraser Institute, which compared the growth performance of the five most recent long-serving prime ministers, annual per-person GDP growth was highest under Chrétien followed by Martin, Mulroney, Harper and Justin Trudeau.

Of course, some defenders will blame COVID for Trudeau’s poor economic growth record, but you can’t reasonably blame the steep but relatively short pandemic-related recession for nearly a decade of stagnation.

There’s no single perfect measure of economic performance, but per-person inflation-adjusted economic growth is an important and widely-used measure of economic success and prosperity. Despite any claims to the contrary, Justin Trudeau’s legacy on economic growth is—in historical terms—dismal. All Canadians should hope that his successor has more success and oversees faster growth in the years ahead.