Will Hild, Executive Director of Consumers' Research joined Jenny Beth to explain ESG (Environmental, Social, and Governance) and how the American people are unwittingly financing woke capitalism.
Will Hild is the Executive Director of Consumers' Research and is one of the leading voices on the issue of ESG or Environmental, Social, and Governance.
You can find more information at consumersdefense.com
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Jenny Beth Martin:
I think some people are beginning to go, "Wait, ESG, what is that?"
Will Hild:
...it's a way to sneak in progressive left platform positions into corporate America. It's basically a way to turn the corporate structure into a political utility for the Democratic Party.
Narrator:
Keeping our republic is on the line, and it requires patriots with great passion, dedication, and eternal vigilance to preserve our freedoms. Jenny Beth Martin is the co-founder of Tea Party Patriots. She's an author, a filmmaker, and one of Time magazine's most influential people in the world. But the title she is most proud of is mom to her boy, girl twins. She has been at the forefront fighting to protect America's core principles for more than a decade. Welcome to the Jenny Beth Show.
Jenny Beth Martin:
Lately, you may have heard people talking about ESG, which stands for environmental, social, and governance. Well, what the heck is ESG? My next guest joins me to explain what it is, and why you should be concerned about it. Will Hild is the Executive Director of Consumers Research, and he has been one of the leading voices ringing the alarm about ESG. Will is an attorney with over a decade of legal communications, and public policy experience. In this episode, we'll break down what ESG means, how it impacts you in specifically your retirement, and what you can do about it. So, thanks so much for joining us. Will.
Will Hild:
Thank you so much for having me, and great to be here.
Jenny Beth Martin:
Well, let's just jump right in. We're hearing a lot more about ESG, and we've heard a lot more about it over the last year, or so, and I think some people are beginning to go, "Wait, ESG, what is that?" But most people still, I don't think understand exactly what it is. Let's break it down. What is it, and why is it a problem?
Will Hild:
Certainly. Well, we have all these sort of left wing acronyms flying around right now. CRT, DEI, and ESG is one of those. And ESG, as you noted, stands for environmental, social, and governance. These are categories under ESG, and it's billed by a support, I'll steelman the argument for them for a moment. They say that it is simply a style of investing. So, you've got like Warren Buffet for example, who's famous for value investing. You've got people who are famous for momentum investing, really understanding when trends are taking off, and the people that are doing ESG, and using public pension dollars to do it, they claim this is just another good style of investing. They try to claim it's a lot about risks, managing risks, but what it really is, is a stocking horse.
It's a way to sneak in progressive left platform positions into corporate America. It's basically a way to turn the corporate structure into a political utility for the Democratic Party. I can go into a little bit about why that is, but before I do, let me just talk about, there's two ways in which ESG shows up in the world. Now, you can go on, if you Google right now, like ESG fund, you'll see a bajillion actually labeled right on the 10. This is an ESG fund, and there's different methodologies that can be used, but generally what that means is they look for companies that are hitting certain priorities, or achieving certain environmental goals, or at least they say they are. We can get into why that's a fraud, but for right now, we'll just leave that aside. That is a small portion of the overall ESG phenomenon that we see. The vast majority of what we see in the world that's ESG style investing is actually people who don't know that their money is invested in the ESG. So, a company like BlackRock for example, it's the largest asset manager in the world.
Before this market downturn, they had about $10 trillion. That's right, $10 trillion in assets under management. And that's mostly because they manage a lot of index funds, very broad vanilla like an S&P 500 index funds, kind of like the most vanilla investment you could have. And I think some of your listeners will probably be stunned if they have the iShares, that's the BlackRock brand. If they have the iShares S&P 500 index fund in their portfolio, they are effectively invested in an ESG fund right now, because what BlackRock, and its CEO Larry Fink does with that money, with those stocks that are in that fund is they go to these companies.
And even though ESG is not in the title of that fund, they push those same priorities, whether it's net zero carbon emission targets, or left-wing social positions, or adding sort of bean counting race, and sex quotas to the boards of these companies saying We want you to add two women, and three black people, and five gay people, whatever they come up with, they are pushing that using the shares that they are holding for you, even though they don't say on the fund ESG. And that is actually the vast majority of ESG, and that's part of the reason it's so nefarious is because they're not honest about what they're doing.
Jenny Beth Martin:
Okay, so let's talk a little bit more about what it is that they're pushing when they're pushing those things. But when you say they're pushing, what do you mean? You gave an example like of quotas on boards, but explain more about that.
Will Hild:
Absolutely. So, it's a great question, and each of the letters stands for different category. So, for example, the E stands for environmental, pretty much all they mean when they talk about environmental scoring is called net zero target. So there was something called the Paris Accord Treaty. This was supposed to bind every major world government to making sure their economies became net zero carbon emitters by 2050. This is a radical extreme platform. It's almost hard to overstate how much lower our standard of living would have to be to hit net zero by 2050, or almost ever for that matter. So this is a radical platform, it was rejected by the United States. Many people remember Trump pulled us out of that because it had only been joined via executive order. So, him as president was able to pull us out. It was rejected, just to be clear how extreme this was.
It was rejected by a democratically controlled senate when it was up for ratification. So, this is a platform that's a target that's so radical that not even the Democratic Party would accept it democratically. So, what they haven't been able to do at the ballot box, they are now pushing through the misuse of public assets. So, they will go to companies, and say, we would like you to see you on track to hit net zero carbon emissions by 2050. Now, some of that is by radically changing the types of fuel that people use. Some of it's not possible. You can't have air travel that doesn't emit some carbon. So they make these companies waste a ton of money buying what they call carbon offsets, which even John Oliver, is certainly not a conservative, has mocked these things as is basically just being fake indulgences that is paid.
And the net effect is that consumers pay higher prices for the goods, and services that they have to buy because these companies are basically wasting their time, and money on these other shenanigans. There's the S that's social. So they've weighed in on issues like LGTBQ issues. There's a growing trend of pushing companies to take positions of what they call reproductive rights, what we would call pro-life issues. And obviously they're pushing people to take radical pro-choice positions. And then governance sounds real nice, because who doesn't want good governance, and they'll talk about transparency. But what this turns into, and this is really terrifying, is often they try to apply constraints on these companies. Most companies usually speaking, give to both sides of the aisle. They just want, when an issue comes up, if you're an airline, you want to be able to talk about FAA issues, or if you're a railroad, you want to be talked to the railroad commission, and have both sides hear you no matter who's in power.
So, the vast majority of the time, corporations give to both sides. Increasingly, companies like BlackRock, and State Street, and Vanguard, the three big asset managers are pushing companies to only give to Democrats. Now, they won't say that explicitly, but what they'll say is, they'll force them to take a position on an issue whether it's net zero, or on again, reproductive rights. And they'll say, we want you to admit anytime you've given to a political candidate that is not aligned with those positions, right? And what the reason they want to do that is because then they want to attack, and have outside groups attack the company for doing so. They get them to admit, and that not just candidates, but trade associations, C3s, and C4s. So, political activity committees just normal C3, we're an adjudicate, we're C3. They basically want to gag, politically, anyone who would oppose their agenda. So, they can always add, that's another thing about ESG. They can kind of throw whatever they want in there, but that's a good overview of the kinds of issues that they're pushing.
Jenny Beth Martin:
Okay, so that's the kind of issues. Where did this originate from? Where did it come from?
Will Hild:
That's a great question, and it's kind of little known fact, because people think it came out of Wall Street. It didn't. Actually, it came out of a, I kid you not, a 2005 UN report. This came out of the United Nations, a project of the United Nations. That's not, when you think about it, that makes a lot of sense. Larry Fink, for example, who I keep bringing up, he's a member of the World Economic Forum. He just spoke there earlier this month, and said a lot of crazy wild things about what our overlords have in store for us. And so this terminology was created, and specifically in that report, the guy who created it, his guy's named Paul Clement Hunt, and he, not the lawyer of Paul Clement, but a different guy, a UN bureaucrat. And he admitted in an interview that part of the reason that this was created was it was intended to hack the Friedmanite, what we call the Milton Friedmanite vision of the corporation, which is supposed to just be returning value to shareholders by serving customers with quality products at low prices.
And this was designed... They realized that had won after the eighties, that view of the corporation, a lot of the nonsense that the left had tried had been dispelled. And so ESG was a targeted, and has now been a successful attempt to sort of hack that view of the corporation. And so with using absurd twisted logic, which I will go into, they try to shoehorn in all of these political objectives by simply saying, "We're just following our fiduciary duty. These are just about risk management, and profit maximization."
Jenny Beth Martin:
Okay, so it go into it, how are they shoehorning these things in?
Will Hild:
Absolutely. So take net zero for example, they claim, I kid you not, their assumptions when you read their publications that they're not being political at all, because every world government by 2050 is going to mandate carbon neutrality. You're going to have to get your admissions to zero by law. Now, they have no evidence for this. They'll claim, oh, the Paris Accord exists kind of as a concept.
Jenny Beth Martin:
They have some crystal ball that magically they know exactly, well, they are the World Economic Forum in the UN, so they might, but it doesn't exist right now.
Will Hild:
Exactly. And what you noted there was very important, they see this somewhat as a self-fulfilling prophecy, right? So, because they are forcing everyone to do it, therefore it will happen, and they can base forcing everyone to do it on the idea that it's happening. So, it's self-licking ice cream cone. It's a circular logic of fiduciary duty. And so they say companies that are behind in hitting net zero targets will do worse under that coming regulatory framework. And companies that are ahead will do better. So, when they take a state's pension fund, I'll get into that in a second. When they take a state like Texas for example, and they're investing for the state of Texas, they claim we're not being political here with your money. We are just following our duty to your taxpayers, and to your pensioners to follow the fiduciary duty.
And these companies are going to be worse off if we don't force them to hit these net zero targets. Now, again, as I've noted, this is all self fulfilling, this is all circular logic, but that's the excuse that they use. And they've used that even in more spurious examples like with the reproductive rights pro-choice, pro-life issue. They will claim without any studies, without any real evidence that companies that operate in states that have restricted abortion, or have more restrictive abortion than others will do worse because they won't be able to attract top tier talent. Now, every poll I've ever seen has shown an almost even split both men, and women on the pro-life issue. So, unless they're stating that women are somehow dumber, or less successful, or not as useful to a corporation, which of course is insulting, and stupid thing to think. I wouldn't put it past them, but that would be a dumb thing to say, that's sort of the basis.
So, you see the recurring theme here. Everything they do, they claim we're not being political, we're just looking at the dollars, and cents, and this policy just magical that every single policy seems that they want these corporations to follow just happens to line up with the progressive agenda. So, basically what we have to do, and we'll get into this about what can be done, but we have to push back on that, say, "No, no, fiduciary duty is a real legal standard. There's plenty of precedents on this. You've shown no due diligence, and you're going to have to account for this. And if you can't, there's going to be consequences either ending of government contracts." But if it's okay with you, why don't I talk about how they got this money in the first place, if that's any help?
Jenny Beth Martin:
Yeah, that's good. And I may come back to something about the fiduciary duty in a minute, but go ahead.
Will Hild:
Certainly.
Jenny Beth Martin:
How do we get [inaudible 00:13:18].
Will Hild:
So, how does a company like BlackRock get $10 trillion of assets under management? Where's all this money coming from? And the sort of sad answer, but also hopeful answer is that it's coming from us. That is state, local, and federal pensions. For example, BlackRock manages about, I think about 80% of the federal thrift savings plan. That's our military's pension fund. But a lot of states have tons of... Teachers unions, police unions, firefighters unions, even in states like Florida, and Texas. South Carolina has nine, and a half billion. Florida has 12. And so over, and over, and over again, you see the states have handed over large sums of money to be managed by these companies. Now, again, it's not their money. Larry Fink is very wealthy. I would love to have his bank account, but he's not using his money to push this agenda.
He's using our money to push this agenda. And whatever we might think of people like everywhere from Charles Koch to George Soros might have a lot of agreement disagreement there, but they're using their own assets to push their political agenda. Larry Fink, and BlackRock, and his cohort are using our money to push these political agenda items, because the states can't manage. They're not investment fund managers. The people that work there aren't good at... They're not Wall Street guys. So, this has to be outsourced to somebody. But the protection that's supposed to exist there is something called the fiduciary duty. And that's a legal standard. It precedes the United States. It's a common law standard that goes back to the English common law hundreds, and hundreds of years. And basically it says there's certain occupations, lawyers are one of them, but financial officers are another, where you have to stand as if you are the client themselves.
You turn off what you want, you turn off your own interests, you turn off your own political agenda, and you say, "I've been hired to do a job here. In this case it's to maximize benefits for the pension fund. I have to focus on that exclusively." And that's the main violation. They are not turning their own mind off. They are not turning off their own political agenda. They are super charging their political agenda, and they're using the money that these states have given them, and the federal government has given them as a cajole. So, they take all this money, and they go, and buy shares of, let's say, Exxon. I can give a concrete example there. And all of these companies have boards of directors who then appoint the officers. So, you've got a board of directors, and under that you have a CEO, a COO that's chief operation officer, CTO, chief technological officer of all these different... And that's who runs the companies, is the officers.
Well, Larry Fink, and BlackRock, and the other companies, they can go meet, they can get a meeting with these people anytime, and they brag about doing it. They call it corporate engagements. And they walk in, and even though it's not their shares, even though it's the shares of South Carolina, and North Carolina, and California, and Illinois, New Jersey, when they walk into the room with the corporation, they just show up with a bunch of shares. In other words, they walk in, they say, "We're your largest shareholder. We own nine 10% of your company. Here are our priorities. We'd like to see you hit net zero. We'd like to have you change your logo to a rainbow in June. We'd like to see you make a take a stand on reproductive rights", as they would call it. Well if you are that officer, and your largest shareholder, the guy who can replace your boards of directors might even be able to get you fired, starts making those types of demands, you're going to at the very least have to listen. You're probably going to have to do what he says.
And that's part of the reason we've seen this woke capitalism phenomenon, all these companies you go, "Why is Coca-Cola ticking off the people that buy Coca-Cola? Why is Nike ticking off the people that could be buying their shoes?" Well, the part of the reason, not the only reason, but big part of the reason is Larry Fink, and others are walking into those boardrooms, and saying, "We don't care what your customers think. We're your shareholders, and we want to see this right here."
Jenny Beth Martin:
And this is a really huge problem. One thing that you said that I think we should, I want you to restate it, and elaborate on it. You mentioned how you've got the Kochs on one side, and Soros on another, and they're using their own money, but Larry Fink is not... Just really, I think that's important to not just gloss over, but reexamine that point.
Will Hild:
Absolutely. Absolutely. So, again, these companies, they're called asset managers for a reason. They are managing someone else's assets. So, just to really get into the terminology, when people are managing their own, they usually call that on Wall Street, there's a term for that's called a family office, meaning you're managing your own family's fortune. So, George Soros has a family office, and he has tons, and tons of money, and he got a lot of investments, and he pushes a lot of political priorities with that money. Same thing with on the other side with Charles Koch. But they are using their own a assets they've used, they've money that they earned, or that they inherited to push their political agendas. I'm not saying that doesn't mean those can't be disagreed with, or pushed back on, but this is another level of corruption. This is a next level corruption, because this is money entrusted to companies like BlackRock on behalf of the public no less.
So, it's one thing if you give your money to an asset manager, and they betray your values, at least you can just go, "Hey, I want my money back." And by law they have to give it to you. But imagine you are a pension recipient in the state of South Carolina. Right now, and this is true if any of your listeners are from South Carolina, your state has money that is being managed by BlackRock, and you have absolutely no say on what political priorities they are pushing with those dollars. And until somebody, whether you're state AG, or your governor, or the pension trustee board, or your state legislature calls them out on it says, you're not doing this with our money anymore. They are going to continue to get to use your dollars to push their politics, and their politics, and get into this, are making everything in your life more expensive from the grocery store to the gas pump, and everywhere in between.
Jenny Beth Martin:
Okay. And how did Larry Fink make his fortune versus Soros, and Charles Koch?
Will Hild:
That's a great question. So, really, co-founded BlackRock, and BlackRock specialized in low cost, what they call index funds. Over the last 20, or so years, there's been a huge move from something called active management. That's like what we think about. Think Gordon Gecko from Wall Street. This is a guy who's going in, people give him a billion dollars, and he buys this, and sells this, and he's on the phone. That is not what BlackRock does most days. Most of their funds, you already know what you're buying, like the S&P 500 index for example. You can go right onto the website right now, and know exactly every company, what percentage of the fund it's made up by. And there's nobody who manages that fund who has any decision making over what investments are made because it's set by the S&P 500 index.
What they do have power, and Larry has admitted this, and admitted in interviews that he uses this power to push political objective. They have power, once that fund buys those shares, how those funds, how those shares, excuse me, are voted in shareholder proposals, how they are voted for boards of directors. Two years ago, Larry Fink, and BlackRock helped elect three radical environmentalists to the board of Exxon. Their stated goal, they were mad at Exxon, because they weren't doing enough to hit this net zero nonsense. And they put three boards of the directors whose stated platform was, we are going to force Exxon to reduce the amount of investments they make in normal run of the mill, their main business oil recovery, and discovery. And we want them to move more, and more of their assets into these super expensive, unreliable so-called green technologies. They're far...
Jenny Beth Martin:
Which may, or may not even make money for them.
Will Hild:
Exactly. Exactly. So, the shareholders are hurt. Imagine you are, again, let's go back to the South Carolina Pension Fund holder, okay? You're relying on this to make sure you don't have to eat cat food in your retirement. Larry Fink is pushing that company into a less profitable direction.
Jenny Beth Martin:
Which means your pension will be worth less.
Will Hild:
Exactly. Exactly. And you are an Exxon customer. You are an oil, and gas customer, I should say. You drive to, and from the grocery store, you use gas. So, as Exxon devotes less, and less resources, that drives up the price of oil, and energy. So, now your power bill is higher, your price at the pump is higher. And since energy is an ingredient in the price of every good, and service in the United States, everything goes up a little by a little bit. So, you are getting hurt by Larry Fink in BlackRock's political activities with your money in two ways. You're getting less as a shareholder, and you are paying more as a consumer.
Jenny Beth Martin:
And you're paying for things that you would never actually personally advocate for, so maybe three ways.
Will Hild:
Exactly. Exactly. And you're having your political interests undermined in a way that's not... It's not right to use someone else's money when they haven't given your permission to do so.
Jenny Beth Martin:
Okay. The companies, you've already talked about how they affected, and you've talked, in essence, about who the major players are. We're really talking a lot about BlackRock. Are there other groups that are doing this, other index funds, other people who are involved in this?
Will Hild:
Yeah, so Larry Fink, and BlackRock are the largest, and the worst, but he has some sidekicks, and they are State Street, and Vanguard. And together those three asset managers, there's even a name for them on Wall Street. They're called the big three because they're the top one, two, three. And if you add them up, they manage about $20 trillion in assets total. So, an immense amount of power that they can apply to a corporation, and to make things even worse. And there's a lot of reason to be hopeful, but let me get through an even scarier part of this. They are coordinating their activities together.
Jenny Beth Martin:
Is that legal? I mean, if a business was coordinating with a competitor, and setting prices, that would not be legal.
Will Hild:
That is exactly right. Exactly right. I believe this may end up being, when we look back in 10, 20 years when this has all been defeated, I think this may go down as the most brazen, infamous antitrust conspiracy in United States history, maybe world history.
Jenny Beth Martin:
It sounds like you're just on its surface without even digging very deep. If they're coordinating together, elaborate.
Will Hild:
Well, to my knowledge, no other antitrust conspiracy in American history has ever put itself on a website as doing so. No one's ever created, "Hey, we're going to price fix the cost of milk. This is our milk price conspiracy.com website." But if your listeners right now go Google Climate Action 100, what you'll find is a conspiracy of asset managers, and asset owners, people who run funds like BlackRock, like State Street, who've all gotten together, and agreed as members of that organization to push these net zero targets. Climate action is specifically set up to push net zero. They agreed to coordinate their activities when they push these companies. So, you got the owners of a business, asset owners, asset managers, right? Owners of business, getting together saying across an entire industry. So, from Chevron to Exxon to Kinder Morgan to all these different companies, we are going to agree to push them to decrease the supply of a good. Oil in this case, right?
Energy right? Now, again, they frame it as, oh, we're just pushing net zero. But if you look at the specifics of what they want, this isn't just a broad commitment to net zero. These are very specific things. Let me go out of oil, and gas for a second into publicly traded utilities. One of their targeted actions that they want to see from these companies is a retirement date set for every one of their coal, and gas powered plants. So, that's a very specific, that's not just a general commitment. They want to tell you when are you going to turn off this plant? And that's not because of safety concerns or like, hey, the plant's getting too old. Not the normal types of where amateurize an asset, and then replace it. I'm talking about we don't like it because it emits carbon. When are you turning this off? And that they put that on the website, they talk about punishing these companies on board of director votes, on executive compensation votes. So, there's carrot, and there's stick, and there's a clear coordination. If that's not an antitrust conspiracy, I don't know what is.
Jenny Beth Martin:
I worked for a paper company when it was right out of college, and I supported, and coded computer systems for a paper mill, and paper companies sell to other paper companies, because I guess it makes more business sense to sell somewhere closer. So, you're getting the paper closer rather than shipping at these heavy couple of ton rolls across the country. And I was on the computer side, so I wasn't dealing with customers, and purchases, but I remember hearing chatter in the office from time to time from the sales department going, I'm not allowed to even talk to... I had to hang up the phone because they were talking about such, and such, and we can't be accused of price fixing, or any sort of antitrust activities. And they were hypersensitive to that.
I remember that from over 30 years ago. Just glimpses of conversations that I heard just as office chatter, and thinking that they're being completely brazen about their coordination is unbelievable. And when they say things like, we're going to make them all shut off their coal power plants, well that's going to affect prices. That affects prices. You're fixing prices. It may not be the traditional sense of fixing it, but it is affecting prices nonetheless.
Will Hild:
Absolutely. And under black letter law, it's been established. You can't get around the antitrust law simply by saying, "Well, I wasn't fixing prices, I was only fixing supply." If you join a conspiracy in an industry to restrict the supply of a good or service, you are as guilty as if you set $4, and 25 cents per gallon of milk, or something like that. And they tried these types of, I tell you, this is how ridiculous some of their excuses are. I've already noted how absurd their notions of fiduciary duty are.
One of the things they've claimed is we sent a letter when we joined Climate Action 100, that we don't join antitrust conspiracies, so it's okay. That's a bit like joining the Medellin cartel, and just sending them a letter that we're not in the business of trading cocaine. Well, that's what the thing is. So, how are you going to join it, right? And then not do the thing that it was set up to do, and not be part of those conversations. Clearly, you are doing those things. You just would like to have a letter, I guess, that says you don't do those things. It's really absurd.
Jenny Beth Martin:
When you are not being truthful, and you're misrepresenting everything that you do, and you change the meanings of words, I suppose you think if you just send a sheet of paper that says you're not doing what you're doing, that people are going to buy you're lying there. When they see things like they want to shut down coal power plants, are they really going to do that, say in India, and China? And ultimately we actually figured out how we're going to live without that kind of energy. My point is it's going to harm America, and European companies, and countries that engage in this, but the production's still going to happen somewhere else in the world, it seems to me.
Will Hild:
100%. And, in fact, I've talked about their breach of fiduciary duty, the lack of trust we should have in them. It gets even worse in the sense that BlackRock, and other companies, the same ones who are pushing ESG rubrics here, pushing net zero targets here, they are financing the building of coal fired power plants in India, and China. They are financing the construction of natural gas pipelines in those countries as well. It's really, you could not make this stuff up. I mean if you wrote this down, people think you're writing about Lex Luther, not Larry Fink, because clearly this has nothing to do with hitting net zero. It doesn't matter where the carbon's admitted, whether it's here or over there. If people are burning coal, and natural gas, this carbon is being emitted. The difference is in America, Larry Fink is cozying up the Democratic Party in return for quid pro quo favors for his company, and to other state governments. I can get into how California, and New York play into this. In China, it's the same game really. He's cozy up to the Chinese Communist [inaudible 00:29:52] Party in order to get...
Jenny Beth Martin:
...to officials. Yeah.
Will Hild:
Exactly. In order to get... It's just that the Chinese Communist Party has a very different, has the opposite agenda of the Democratic Party. Democratic Party really, I mean if you look at what's going on in the Biden, administration, they want to destroy our energy independence. They want to destroy the reliability of our grid, the cheapness of our grid. The Chinese Communist Party, to their credit, really, wants to provide cheap, reliable, affordable energy to their people. And Larry Fink is more than happy to help them do that overseas, and in fact using in American investment. Now they need dollars to do that, right? So, he takes American investment dollars, and helps finance over there. And one thing I find this entertaining, again, I keep saying they always have some sort of very paper thin argument as to why what they're doing is, okay.
Get this. Here's their reasoning for why it's totally okay to treat the West like everything needs to be turned off, and be building Chinese coal powered plants. They claim that in order to hit, this is all part, helping China build super high emitting coal fired power plants, super efficient natural gas pipelines, that is actually helping them get to net zero, because get ready, they are going to have to go through a high emitting phase first before they go down. So, they're going to have to go up in admissions before they go down. Now, Larry is happy to profit on both sides of that, right? But what's funny about that, and I'm not accusing Larry Fink of being a communist, he's not, he's just an opportunist. But that's kind of the same argument that Marx used to use.
You had to go through the capitalist cycle before you could go to the communist. It's just kind of funny to me that these global technocrats who want to control everything always kind of end up at the same point. As they say, they don't care what you do as long as it's mandatory. They just want to be the one pulling the levers, making people do different things. But you're 100% right. Just China's increase in emissions is going to overwhelmingly make up for any reductions the United States could see. So, there's no, this is not, even if Larry Fink got his way, it would not make a difference, because what is going to happen in India, and China is going to so overwhelm that, and rightly so. These people are living in abject poverty.
Jenny Beth Martin:
And if they do that, if China does that, and there're already so many threats from China, but you're talking about the people from South Carolina, so you're harming your retirement fund, you're causing prices to go up with everything that you purchase, and you're working against your funding, your political adversaries, and on top of all of that, you're funding our country's... You're funding things that could wind up hurting us from a national security standpoint. So, you're harming your own country's national security standing in the world.
Will Hild:
Absolutely. Not just our national security, although obviously that's foremost, but you're help gutting our manufacturing base. So, as our energy sector becomes less competitive as our price per kilowatt hour goes up relative to places like China, and India, and Vietnam, these places that BlackRock is more than happy to build coal, and gas powered plants. It's going to be more economically, the logic of manufacturing things in the United States relative to these countries is going to go down. So, you're actually helping ship jobs over to these countries as well, and man manufacturing base, and all the acumen that comes along with that. Which gets also to your point about national security is the more we build over there, the less we know how to build ourselves.
Jenny Beth Martin:
Right. So, it's harmful at every angle, and everywhere you turn around.
Will Hild:
Absolutely. Literally the only two groups of people that are benefited by this are the asset managers doing it. And the Chinese Communist Party, everyone else involved, well I should say three groups, the Chinese Communist Party, the asset managers, and the Democratic Party, the people benefiting from that. Now, over the long haul, they're tied to the hate of America, too, so they're going to be hurt. But those are really the only three groups that are helped by this. Everyone else is taking a hit. Consumers pay higher prices, pensioners get lower returns, workers have their jobs shipped overseas at every level people are hurt except for these people that are in on the grift.
Jenny Beth Martin:
Okay, so, that's a huge problem. Before we go into talking about how we might fix it, I just want to go back to something you talked about a few minutes ago, and that was talking about the joke that is carbon offsets. Elaborate on how it's fake.
Will Hild:
Yes. So, there's certain industries that will never be able to get to net zero. You're never going to be able to fly a plane with a battery. The battery will weigh more than it will be able to create lift. So, you're always going to be burning jet fuel in order to fly. So, I'll just take that, that's not the only industry, but let's just take that as an example. So what Larry Fink, and others like him want these companies to do is to become net zero by paying money. So, they'll add prices to the ticket. You actually can already do this voluntarily if you're so inclined. I don't know why anyone would be, but can, when you buy a ticket, they will give you an option to add money to offset the carbon of your trip. And what that money really goes to is things like, I kid you not, paying people not to cut down trees that they weren't going to cut down anyway.
So, let's say you owned a bunch of just wild forest land, or just a bunch of pine in Florida. I grew up in Florida, and because of the way they have a AG tax credit there, a lot of people just put pine trees on their property so they don't have to pay as high of taxes. So, you have acres, and acres, and acres, and acres of pine. Well, the carbon offset, one example of this is to pay one of the people who owns those trees that they already weren't going to cut down, because they're getting the tax credit.
Jenny Beth Martin:
Tax credit.
Will Hild:
To continue not cutting them down. With the idea, well, the trees will help offset the carbon, because they're going to take in the carbon, and turn it into wood, and then eventually get either used in furniture, go back into the ground. And so that's the level of absurdity we're dealing with in these net zero targets for some of these companies, you're really just talking about paying an indulgence tax. These indulgences were sort of part of what led to the whole process reformation because you had priests saying, "Oh you can go sin, you can do whatever you want", and you just pay the church a fee, basically. And of course that both increased the amount of sinning, because people, "Oh, I can just pay a fee." And also the money wasn't going to, in many cases, wasn't going to, apologies to my Catholic brethren who I love, but there was a lot of abuse, simony as they called it.
And there is exact same thing going on here. Larry Fink rides around in a private jet. He flew to Davos in a private jet. He's not going to reduce his carbon emissions one bit. What he wants is for you to pay higher prices so that he can feel good about his virtue, right? Because really it's about power. So, that's a example of carbon offsets, they're just a joke. There's a lot of other examples. Sometimes they can't even find, I mentioned at least in that case, there is a real field of trees somewhere. In some of these cases it's all just a fraud. They haven't done anything.
Jenny Beth Martin:
So, in the paper company that I worked for, the particular paper mill where I worked, the state government there said, you're the paper mill emits too much emissions. We've got to get your emissions down, because it's not in the standards that we now have within our state. This is years ago. So, they found a way to fix that problem, and that is really the emissions from the plant had to hit a certain level. So, the way to hit the level was to build a second paper mill at the exact same plant, and increase the pollution coming out, but because the two paper mills together, the two machines, not mills but the two machines within the mill together had a lower average emission, even though it was higher, it was a higher amount, but the average was lower, that was acceptable. So, they built another paper mill, and increased, of course it created jobs I guess in the area.
I don't even know if that plant still exists because so much has been offshored. But it didn't decrease pollution at all. It was a joke, and people knew it was a joke, and the company still paid the money to go along with the rules that the government had laid out. And when I hear these things about carbon offsets, every single time I hear it, I'm just like, "I know what this game is about." And it really is a game. It's not real. It's not real at all. And the companies know it, and they go along with it, because maybe they can create a new paper mill, and have more output, or something. But it's lies.
Will Hild:
Yeah, totally.
Jenny Beth Martin:
We're not being honest, and it's very frustrating to me.
Will Hild:
Absolutely. I would just add to that, we would not also... Like it is bad that resources, and profits are being wasted on fallacious nonsense. But it would actually be worse if they really did it, because if they had actually had to reduce those, they would have to turn off the mill, or reduce their supply if paper, okay. They'd have to really do it quote, unquote, the way the far, far radical left wants them to do it. Then there would be less paper in the world. In other words, cost would go up, there'd be lower standard of living, and that would be the effect. So, Larry, I will say this, Larry defends himself by saying, "Listen, I'm caught between two extremists." And one side he would call me an extremist, I'm a climate denier, or something like that. And he would say, "These people over here, like consumers research, they're attacking me, because I'm doing too much ESG."
"But I've got people to my left, these whackadoodles who glue themselves to paintings, and throw soup on the Mona Lisa, and all that. They want me to be doing more, and I'm just this reasonable centrist, who's just trying to find a middle ground." Let me explain what's wrong with that. One, to your point, many of the solutions that these companies end up hitting just to hit BlackRock's agenda items are absurd, and wasteful, and they don't do anything at all. So, that's one bad side of it. But two, if he was to give in to those people, it would be even worse. So, what's the problem with his defense, which is I'm just trying to mitigate the damage. Well, the problem here is this, it would be like if you were caught between a lawyer who told you he didn't want you to break the law at all. He was trying to tell you how to stay [inaudible 00:40:46].
Jenny Beth Martin:
In the law.
Will Hild:
And an uncle who was mobbed up, let's say, who wanted you to break the law all the time, and you say, "You know what? I'm going to be a radical. I'm going to be a reasonable centrist here. I'm just going to break the law half of the time."
Jenny Beth Martin:
It doesn't work.
Will Hild:
It doesn't work. And that's the thing, Larry Fink, BlackRock, State Street, and Vanguard, they have a legal duty that they have to meet. This isn't a suggestion. The fiduciary duty, when they take on money from everything from pension funds to public university endowments, they take on a legal liability of fiduciary duty, and saying that there might be people out there, radicals, who want them to misuse that money even more than they're already doing, is not a defense for the amount of abuse, and misuse they are currently doing. They need to be doing none of it. And just saying that there are people who would like you to do more is not a defense. So, I just want to make that clear, because you'll hear that. You'll hear that coming out of BlackRock, and Larry, and he said it at the World Economic Forum that, "Listen, I'm just trying to find middle ground here. I'm trying to be reasonable."
Jenny Beth Martin:
It's not reasonable, and it's harmful, and it ultimately undermines America, and it's a real, a very real problem. What can we do to push back against it?
Will Hild:
Yeah, well the number one thing people can do is to contact their state elected representatives, because there is so much state pension money that has been handed off to this company, that has not been properly overseen. And I'm sorry to say that it should be an embarrassment for the states that care about their native industries that have been targeted. And to be clear, we've talked a lot about oil, and gas, but AG has been targeted. Manufacturing, mining, will become almost impossible to get capital to open a new mine in the United States. So, coal in West Virginia, you have some elected representatives take this very seriously. Treasurer Moore in West Virginia, for example, Governor Ron DeSantis is taking it seriously. The state of Texas, both Comptroller Hager, and Senator Brian Hughes there at the State Affairs committee. So, you've seen some green shoots of people coming along.
But what we really need is all the horses pulling in the same direction. The governor's offices have a role in this. The AGs offices have a role in this. The state legislatures have a role in this, and your treasurers, which are kind of often unsung heroes in this space. So, I know it's a broad suggestion, but people need to be reaching out to their elected representatives at the state level, and just letting them know, "I really care about ESG, I care about knowing that my pension fund", or if you're not a beneficiary, "My state's pension funds are not being used against my own both financial, and political interest."
That's going to go a long way because a big part of the reason that they were able to build this huge apparatus right under our noses is because people didn't think it was an area... We're worried about CRT, and we're worried about DEI, and we're worried about tax rates. And those things are all important. That's not to throw off on them, but we have to also mind the store when it comes to how our state's pension money is being used. And that's step one is just to let our elected representatives, you really want to see action on this, and we're starting to see that, so it's really encouraging.
Jenny Beth Martin:
Okay. That is a useful step. And is that, can they find more information about this on your website?
Will Hild:
Absolutely. I'm going to give a slightly different website. We have both a C3 organization.
Jenny Beth Martin:
Right, and [inaudible 00:44:05]
Will Hild:
Consumers Research, and a C4, Consumers defense. People who are interested can go to consumersdefense.com. There they can see two model bills of legislation that should be moving through almost every state, every red state I should say, conservative legislature in America this year. And they can find out how they can contact the representative, and make sure that person takes that bill seriously, takes those bills seriously, and hopefully lends their support to them.
Jenny Beth Martin:
Okay. I think that's really good. And then before we close out, is there anything else that you think people should know? You know so much so you're probably like, "Well I've got another five volumes", but if this was a first exposure to ESG, is there anything else you think they should be considering right now?
Will Hild:
Yeah, the last thing I would just say is to take a look at your 401K investments, your personal investments, because while I did talk a lot about pension funds today, because I think that's where the abuse is so egregious. BlackRock, and State Street, and Vanguard also manage a ton of 401K, and private retirement funds. And just because you don't have any funds that say ESG on them, as I explained at the beginning, doesn't mean your money isn't being used against your interest. And so I'd recommend to the extent you can move your money. I would move to a company more like Schwab, or Fidelity, or Strive Investments for example, that just launched specifically to get away from this. There's also another company called Second Vote that's very good, has a lot of investment opportunities run by the former CEO of Hardee's, Andy Puzder. So, I would just admonish people to go, and audit kind of their own investments, and if they can move out of the big three funds, State Street, Vanguard, and BlackRock, they would be going a long way, and making sure their money isn't being used to undermine their own interests.
Jenny Beth Martin:
Okay, that is very useful information. And then it's consumers... Consumers plural?
Will Hild:
Consumers, plural, defense.com. Consumersdefense.com.
Jenny Beth Martin:
Okay, well thank you so much Will Hild for being on today. We had Will Hild, who is the executive director of Consumers Research, and also the Executive Director of Consumers Defense. And you need to go check out his website at consumersdefense.com, and you need to go check your own 401Ks to find out if there are ways that you can make sure you're not investing in ESG, which winds up harming you in the long run, and probably in the short run as well. So, thank you very much for joining us. I'm Jenny Beth Martin, and this is a Jenny Beth Martin show.
Narrator:
The Jenny Beth Show is hosted by Jenny Beth Martin, produced by Kevin Mooneyhan, and directed by Luke Livingston. The Jenny Beth Show is a production of Tea Party Patriots Action. For more information, visit teapartypatriots.org.
Jenny Beth Martin:
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