For the full PDF of this policy tip sheet, click here.

Environmental, social, and governance (ESG) scores are an insidious mechanism by which a cabal of ideologically aligned influential interests working through unelected supranational organizations are attempting to “reset” the global financial system to their advantage. At its core, this emerging design circumvents national sovereignty, free markets, and individual rights by altering traditional financial methods of assessing risk and allocating capital and credit. This attempted shift from “shareholder capitalism” to a “stakeholder collectivism” model hinges upon assigning companies, and soon individuals, arbitrarily determined ESG social credit scores. These scores mandate subjective and politically motivated commitments to “climate” and “social justice” objectives, which draw heavily from the United Nations-sponsored Sustainable Development Goals.1

Essentially, ESG operates by punishing poorly scored companies with reduced or altogether eliminated access to capital and credit, while highly scored companies receive substantial capital in-flows, in addition to tax breaks, grants, access to “special financial vehicles,” preferential contracting, and potentially other yet-to-be-defined advantages.2 Ultimately, these measures are designed to centralize power and wealth in the hands of unelected technocrats, central bankers, regulators, and globalist institutions. The full institutionalization of ESG—internationally and domestically—would represent a major step towards consolidating a unitary global governance model, ultimately causing the dissolution of free markets, national sovereignty, due process under the law, and individual liberty.3

The following is a brief summary of how the banking industry has used its coercive market power to weaponize ESG compliance.