Move over CRT. 

The latest hot-button three-letter acronym sparking political debate is ESG – short for the progressive push to ensure companies embrace environmental, social and corporate governance metrics. It’s a way to embed subjective woke politics into how investors evaluate the health of companies. One Colorado CEO is sounding the alarm bell ESG will have dire consequences for people and nations its advocates claim to defend. 

ESG has become a divisive rallying cry across the political spectrum, with competing camps setting up their tents on the left and right banks of the River Woke. 

What both sides agree on is ESG adds progressive metrics such as climate change and social justice issues to the factors major investors, including state pension funds like Colorado PERA, use to evaluate companies. Progressives assert only through a top-down push to get companies to embrace woke policies can companies truly do their part to create a more just, equitable and healthier planet. 

A central focus is addressing climate change through an aggressive attack on fossil fuels, with hydrocarbons being Global Public Enemy Number One.

But does the “E” in ESG really spark the utopian improvements it promises, or is it a feel-good gesture by progressive elites that will have life-threatening effects around the globe, particularly in poor and developing countries?  

Enter Chris Wright, chairman and CEO of Colorado-based Liberty Energy.   Wright is passionate about the ability of hydrocarbons – the molecule liberals love to hate – to be a central catalyst in human flourishing, not just now but stretching back into the mid-19th century. 

Wright’s message is we need to remove the ideological rose-colored glasses and look at the real-world practical impact of ESG policies. He shared his critique at a recent Colorado Business Roundtable next to a nationally prominent ESG advocate. 

It’s not the “return on investment” that’s the biggest concern, or, frankly, the most persuasive and eye opening. It’s how waging war on hydrocarbon fuels worsens global poverty and damages public health.

“A myopic focus on climate change that simply drives up energy prices and exports jobs and opportunity is bad,” Wright told me the other day.  “Bad for quality of life, bad for economic activity and bad for climate progress. All things belong in proper perspective, and with today’s ESG movement that proper perspective is nonexistent.”

Liberty published a powerful, unapologetic and winsome ESG report called “Bettering Human Lives” that goes into deep detail.  

While elites want to take a flamethrower to your gas-powered stove, for entire sections of the globe the only available heating and cooking fuel is dung, charcoal, agricultural waste, or wood.  

As the Liberty report states: “Simply for lack of access to a basic stove and a (propane) canister, over three million people die every year from the resulting indoor air pollution.” The transition from solid fuels to liquid fuels –  such as propane – or electricity or natural gas would save millions of additional lives by reducing outdoor air pollution as well, according to the World Health Organization (WHO). 

So the carbon-based fuel targeted by the ESG crowd addresses the “E” (cleaner environment) and “S” (reducing poverty, and improving public health in developing countries). But this good news doesn’t fit in the ideological silos of the ESG elites. 

Wright appeared alongside a vice president from BlackRock, the massive global investment firm that is the driving force in the ESG narrative and ESG-focused investing. As with most debates, you learn more by the topics speakers avoid.  

Directly addressing Wright’s assertions about hydrocarbon-based fuels being foundational to human flourishing would have pulled him way off his very well-crafted talking points. Just as with Critical Race Theory (CRT), ESG advocates claim criticisms are overblown, and critics are just uninformed. ESG is just an innocuous set of metrics that help guide decision making, he said ignoring the many raised eyebrows in the audience.   

What didn’t the BlackRock executive address? Wright’s specific and documented charges about what he calls “energy poverty” and the 2 billion people around the globe who lack access to modern energy and clean cooking fuel – including 80% of Africans.  Fuel made from hydrocarbons.

Talk about “an inconvenient truth.”  

It’s far easier to spout platitudes and paper over problems, literally. ESG advocates would rather force companies to file endless reports chock full of self-congratulatory statistics to demonstrate their fealty to the world of woke. 

That’s simpler than the ESG crowd getting boots on the ground to address global poverty. There are few places to park the private jet near villages cooking dinner with dung. 

Sean Duffy, a former deputy chief of staff to Gov. Bill Owens, is a communications and media relations strategist and ghostwriter based in the Denver area.