Utah State Treasurer Marlo Oaks recently visited northeastern Utah and made time for an interview with Evans Family Media on Newstalk KVEL 104.5 FM AM920 on the topic of ESG. ESG stands for ‘Environmental, Social, and Governance’ and serves as a type of rating system to grade non-financial information like climate implications and staff diversity within a company. Oaks says the truth is that an ESG score is really a political score because it underlies political issues and these issues are being pushed on corporate America. “Traditionally, the purpose of a company was to service its owners, the shareholders,” explained Oaks. “If you change that to serve society then you can push societal issues through corporations. So those who are trying to push social agendas and environmental agendas change the purpose of a corporation to serve society and that is by definition ‘stakeholder capitalism’ which is another term for ESG.” So how does this affect the oil and gas industry? Oaks said that even though the United States produces the cleanest energy and utilizes the cleanest ways of extracting that energy, their ESG score undermines them in the name of climate change and affects the companies access to capital. Oaks said the nation should not be against green energy sources but that the move in energy policies to mandate replacing fossil fuel use with all renewable energy would be like shooting the horse in the 1870s before cars had been invented. And energy isn’t the only industry under attack, according to Oaks. “Energy and agriculture are the two foundational industries of any prosperous society and those two are under attack like never before.” When asked if this is or could take hold in Utah, Oaks said he hopes not but that this topic is one of the great issues of this time in United States history. The theme is centralization of power and big government versus decentralization where markets include many different actors with different viewpoints and freedom to do what they want with their money. And who exactly is behind a push for centralization? Oaks says that there actually is a push by the UN(United Nations) to create a global governance structure. The World Economic Forum likewise is pushing ESG in order to break the free enterprise system. Those interested in learning more and what is being done to push back can visit www.MarloOaks.com where there is a tab titled ‘Stop ESG’.
