On Tuesday, Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) failed to win the election as Speaker of the House of Representatives due to the opposition of 20 members, including 18 election skeptics.
McCarthy stood for Speaker in 2015 as well, and his failure to win on the first ballot was the first time this had happened in a century. The House Republican caucus’s “unsteadiness circle firing squad [and] dysfunction,” as Sen. Shelley Moore Capito (R-W.Va.) put it to Politico, portends poorly for effective government.
Whatever happens at the federal level, state GOP officials are pushing on. House Republicans have vowed to challenge the consideration of environmental, social, and corporate governance (ESG) aspects in investing in the new Congress.
Unless they make investments in fossil fuel businesses, Kentucky State Treasurer Allison Ball threatened to divest state funds from 11 significant financial institutions, including Citigroup, JPMorgan Chase, and BlackRock.
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According to Inside Climate News:
According to the mutual fund research firm Morningstar, 90% of corporations claim to either have or are creating a formal strategy to manage their corporate environmental, social, and governance policies. Republicans may not be able to reverse the ESG movement’s momentum.
However, the politicization of ESG may turn it into something akin to Covid vaccinations, school texts, and mask-wearing. Depending on where investors stand on the political spectrum of the country and, to a large extent, whatever state they reside in, their savings may be subject to the hazards of climate change or the opportunities presented by the transition to clean energy.
According to Gregory Wetstone, president and CEO of the American Council on Renewable Energy, this is definitely a strange attempt to launch a new front in the culture wars and it is fundamentally at odds with how the market functions and the principles of capitalism. They are putting their political goal ahead of the financial security of others.
To Delve Farther Further:
Future chaos: The Washington Post, Politico, E&E News, The New York Times; Speaker election: The Washington Post; Election deniers: The Washington Post; ESG attacks: Inside Climate News; Kentucky: Reuters, Politico Pro, The Hill
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