World-leading investment manager BlackRock is demanding climate friendliness from all the companies in which it invests. Billionaire pilgrims to Davos wasted no time in spreading environmental, social and governance (ESG) dogma across the Swiss Alps.
Even Down Under, mining major BHP let it be known, albeit belatedly, that it was considering exiting the thermal coal business, a sacrilege in some climate-denialist circles.
Australian bushfires wasted no time in exacting revenge on coal by smoking out 11% of it at BHP’s New South Wales Energy Coal unit, and Anglo American began hot-footing towards a climate-friendly fertilising multinutrient that leaves the tiniest of carbon footprints when processed, and causes some of its potash peers to appear positively climate calamitous.
Making the most of climate friendliness has become a sign of the investment times, with ESG here, ESG there and ESG simply everywhere.