Mainstream Media Amplifies Fink’s ESG Failure

Larry Fink, the woke CEO of BlackRock, is using his influence in the business world as well as his company’s massive asset portfolio to push his beliefs about climate policy on the rest of the world – whether it likes it or not.

In a New York Times commentary, Fink called for “[a]chieving the net-zero transition” on emissions in just over 25 years. And he added that “rich countries must put more taxpayer money to work in driving the net-zero transition abroad.”

In his own Townhall commentary, Free Enterprise Project (FEP) Director Scott Shepard calls out Fink’s “arrogant disregard” for others. He also asserts that Fink is “legally and morally incompetent to fill the private policy-czar role that he has built for himself.”

He further writes:

Fink fails even to consider, much less seriously to grapple with, the fact that reaching net-zero by 2050 might not be the right goal, or might not even be technologically possible at all. If he were fulfilling his fiduciary duties to his clients and shareholders, those would be the first questions in his mind. Instead he simply relies on the deeply politicized assertion that if we don’t reach the 2050 goal, “the entire world will be overwhelmed by the effects of climate change.”

After all, Scott points out, “carbon-reduction plans are even now failing so spectacularly as to be increasing carbon emissions.” Additionally, even though there are benefits to global warming, the negative effects of climate change “can be addressed as technology affordably permits.”

Furthermore, if Fink were really interested in getting tough about his zero-emission goal, he would be getting tough about China – which has a massive carbon output and seemingly little care for abiding by Fink’s agenda. Despite this, “BlackRock announced a new Chinese ETF and Fink himself encouraged massive private investment in China,” Scott notes.

All of this raises questions about Fink’s logic and about his responsibility as a CEO:

If Fink were making decisions according to his fiduciary duty – that is, without regard to his personal policy (or possibly personal financial) preferences, but in sole consideration of the financial best interests of his clients and shareholders – he would have grappled seriously with the possibility that the climate situation is so far down the road that it’s too late to stop it. If that were true, then he would have reached very different conclusions than he did in his Times op/ed. He also would have addressed the desperate and timely question of whether the politicized decarbonization schedule is technologically feasible in a way that won’t render everyone except plutocrats – so, including his investors and shareholders, but not him – radically poorer.

“[T]here realistically isn’t any way that decarbonization will proceed according to the left’s politicized schedules,” Scott concludes. Yet Fink continues to promote the woke climate change agenda. And the New York Times abides when it gives him a larger platform than he already commands.

That’s a loss to investors in BlackRock, and consumers everywhere.

FEP is a frequent critic of Fink and BlackRock, and has participated in the company’s shareholder meetings.

To read Scott’s Townhall commentary – “Larry Fink Reveals the Unfixable Corruption of ESG” – in its entirety, click here.