Global warming, climate change, all these things are just a dream come true for politicians. I deal with evidence and not with frightening computer models because the seeker after truth does not put his faith in any consensus. The road to the truth is long and hard, but this is the road we must follow. People who describe the unprecedented comfort and ease of modern life as a climate disaster, in my opinion have no idea what a real problem is.
At its 2026 annual shareholder meeting in May, CFACT went straight to the top, asking BlackRock Chairman and CEO Larry Fink whether the world’s largest asset manager will let clients walk away from sustainability investing entirely.
At its 2026 annual shareholder meeting in May, CFACT went straight to the top, asking BlackRock Chairman and CEO Larry Fink whether the world’s largest asset manager will let clients walk away from sustainability investing entirely.
CFACT’s Melanie Collette put the question to Fink: “BlackRock has expanded Voting Choice to $3.76 trillion in eligible assets, which the company frames as respecting client preferences. Does that same logic of client autonomy extend to clients who prefer that their assets not be managed through a sustainability lens at all, and if so, how?”
BlackRock has spent years promoting Voting Choice as proof that it respects what clients want. Fine. Then the principle has to cut both ways. A pension fund or an individual investor who wants nothing to do with Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) screening deserves the same deference as one who wants more of it.
Fink chose to answer Collette’s question alongside two from climate activists demanding BlackRock abandon fossil fuels. The pairing said plenty. BlackRock catches it from both directions now, and Fink built one answer to absorb all three questions.
“We have shareholders with very different perspectives,” Fink said. “But as a fiduciary, all the money we manage belongs to our clients. We manage their assets according to their direction, to their wishes.”
He pointed to BlackRock’s product shelf as the answer. “Our clients can choose which companies or sectors or regions they want exposure to,” Fink said, noting that more than 90 percent of BlackRock’s equity assets sit in index strategies designed by third parties, which the firm is obligated to track. He added that BlackRock manages over $1 trillion in dedicated sustainable assets on behalf of clients who want them.
Then he pivoted to his favorite theme. “For several years, I’ve argued for energy pragmatism,” Fink said. “Meeting rising demand will require expanding supply across oil and gas.” But it also means expanding renewables, storage, nuclear, and the grid, he said. “The goal is not to favor one technology over another.”
Notice what Fink didn’t do: actually answer the question. Collette asked whether client autonomy includes the ability to opt out of the sustainability lens fully. Fink responded that clients have plenty of choices, including sustainable ones. But a bigger menu is not the same thing as a simple yes. The closest he came was his point about third-party indexes, which sounded less like a clear policy than an easy out: BlackRock just tracks whatever the index providers build.
Still, Fink now frames his message around fiduciary duty and “energy pragmatism,” not climate evangelism. That shift says a lot about how much the ground has moved. This is the same CEO whose annual letters once warned corporate America that climate risk was investment risk. The activists lined up to question him noticed the change, too. And they were clearly not happy about it.
The ballot itself was quiet. Shareholders considered four management items and not a single shareholder proposal, a change for a company that spent years as a magnet for ESG fights. All 19 director nominees were elected with an average support of roughly 97 percent. The ratification of Deloitte as auditor passed with about 95 percent. An amendment to a subsidiary charter, removing a voting provision adopted in connection with the GIP acquisition, passed with the support of about 77 percent of votes outstanding.
The one sore spot for management was executive pay. The non-binding say-on-pay vote drew support from only about 65 percent of the votes cast. It passed, but most large companies clear these votes with 90 percent or better. A third of the vote going against Fink’s pay package is a rebuke, and BlackRock’s board said it will “take that feedback into account” going forward.
Fink also used the meeting to highlight BlackRock’s momentum, pointing to nearly $800 billion in client net inflows in 2025, a 10 percent dividend increase, and plans for stepped-up buybacks in 2026. He also outlined a three-part digital assets strategy, saying BlackRock now manages about $130 billion tied to crypto ETFs, stablecoin reserves, and tokenized funds. He said the firm wants to become “the stablecoin reserve manager of choice.”
When asked about turmoil in the Strait of Hormuz, Fink noted that BlackRock manages more than $150 billion in the Middle East and described Gulf sovereign wealth funds as some of the firm’s fastest-growing relationships.
CFACT attends shareholder meetings like this one to put hard questions on the record and hold corporate America accountable for what it does with other people’s money. BlackRock says client preference is king. CFACT will keep asking whether that holds when the preference is no ESG at all.
BlackRock CEO Larry Fink has publicly shifted toward what he calls energy pragmatism, admitting that society now demands a balanced approach to meeting power needs rather than adherence to rigid climate agendas. This could be a pivotal moment for global energy policy, as one of the planet’s most powerful financial players steps back from decades of ill-advised “green” mandates.
BlackRock CEO Larry Fink has publicly shifted toward what he calls energy pragmatism, admitting that society now demands a balanced approach to meeting power needs rather than adherence to rigid climate agendas. This could be a pivotal moment for global energy policy, as one of the planet’s most powerful financial players steps back from decades of ill-advised “green” mandates.
BlackRock’s Reach
BlackRock is the world’s top financial manager, overseeing more than $10 trillion in assets that sway markets, companies and even governments. It delivers risk analysis tools that guide how firms allocate capital, set strategies and tackle issues from energy supply to corporate governance. BlackRock’s hand is in everything from pension funds to sovereign wealth, where its votes and investments steer decisions affecting wide swaths of society.
Fink points to China, which leads in new nuclear plants and vast solar installations while importing record volumes of natural gas and oil to meet surging demand. “Society has moved into a better position of having more pragmatism,” Fink states, “and what you’re hearing from me is I’m echoing what we’re hearing from our clients.” Better to have clients than ideologues steering the ship.
ESG’s Costly Effect
Fink’s tone matches his earlier report of $4 billion lost in ESG-linked assets in 2023, a hit from states like Florida and others pulling funds over concerns about politicized investing. BlackRock dropped the “weaponized” ESG label by mid-2023 and exited the Net Zero Asset Managers group in January 2025 amid antitrust probes and backlash from state governments.
Clients forced Fink’s hand after years of BlackRock deploying their money to advance ESG and related priorities, often with the encouragement of left-leaning managers of public pension funds like New York’s. Fiduciary duty – maximizing investor returns – had taken a backseat as the firm lobbied corporations on “woke” interests ranging from board diversity to cuts in industrial emissions. Now, with lawsuits mounting and states divesting billions, Fink invokes that same duty to justify pragmatism.
Fink’s reversal exposes the scam. BlackRock wielded trillions to warp board politics and policies, betraying investors for a clique’s dreams. Now, scrutiny and an outflow of funds force truth. Fink’s admission also validates what skeptics argued: Climate narratives overstated risks to advance costly fantasies. Data show no increase in extreme weather, for which emissions of CO2 have been absurdly blamed. Hurricanes, floods and droughts have followed historical norms.
Climate alarmists’ infatuation with wind and solar energy has run into the reality of physics. So-called “renewables” falter where reliability counts. Their intermittency strands grids during times of peak demands, hiking costs for families and factories. In contrast, fossil fuels and nuclear power human prosperity. They provide the dense, affordable and reliable energy required by modern civilization.
The campaign to abruptly replace them with low-density, weather-dependent alternatives was a mathematical impossibility from the start. A foundation of coal, natural gas and nuclear energy is needed to maintain a modern standard of living. This is why Asian industrial economies continually added fossil fuel capacity behind a veneer of “green” pretense.
Look at global patterns. Growth in wind and solar capacity covers only a small part of rising electricity needs. China builds nuclear faster than anyone and guzzles oil and gas imports to fuel factories and homes. Despite net-zero pledges, India accelerated domestic coal production while exploring small modular reactors to power its 1.4 billion people and hit 8% growth targets.
Even European countries that once championed rapid shifts to “renewables” began to reconsider after the 2022 energy crisis exposed vulnerabilities. In Germany, factories shut down and household budgets strained when Russian gas supplies tightened and wind and solar stalled during calm or cloudy periods.
After years of climate-driven experimentation – forced by deluded or dishonest politicians and business titans – the failures became too many and too consequential to be ignored. Little wonder that Larry Fink has turned his ear away from the rhetoric of alarm and toward client demands for strategic guidance.
Originally published in Daily Caller on March 24, 2026.
Vijay Jayaraj is a Science and Research Associate at the CO2 Coalition, Fairfax, Virginia. He holds an M.S. in environmental sciences from the University of East Anglia and a postgraduate degree in energy management from Robert Gordon University, both in the U.K., and a bachelor’s in engineering from Anna University, India. He served as a research associate with the Changing Oceans Research Unit at University of British Columbia, Canada
Major global asset managers including BlackRock and Blackstone have been looking to buy power utilities across America in a move that some industry insiders warn could harm consumers, raise electricity costs and advance a climate-driven energy agenda.
Major global asset managers including BlackRock and Blackstone have been looking to buy power utilities across America in a move that some industry insiders warn could harm consumers, raise electricity costs and advance a climate-driven energy agenda.
In recent months, Blackstone reportedly sought regulatory approval to buy utilities in New Mexico and Texas all while a BlackRock-led group won approval Friday to purchase a major utility in Minnesota. While BlackRock and other huge asset managers have distanced themselves from environmental, social and governance (ESG) investment practices in recent years, some energy experts and consumer advocates that spoke to the Daily Caller News Foundation are concerned that buying up utilities may represent a new frontier of financial giants orchestrating “climate mandates.”
“BlackRock isn’t just influencing utilities anymore, they’re buying them. After years of ESG-driven coercion that pushed utilities to abandon reliable energy in favor of China-dependent renewables, BlackRock is now taking direct control. The result will be more of the same: higher costs, weaker grids, and millions in unpaid bills, all driven by the very climate mandates they lobbied for,” Jason Isaac, CEO of the American Energy Institute, told the DCNF. “Minnesotans should brace for more unreliable power, rising rates, and a media narrative that blames Trump for ending taxpayer-funded handouts instead of holding the woke politicians and Wall Street elites responsible for the crisis.”
Against this backdrop, private investment titans like BlackRock and Blackstone are reportedly moving to buy power utility companies and invest in data center expansions and startups.
Minnesota recently granted the BlackRock-led group known as Global Infrastructure Partners (GIP) approval to buy one of the state’s major power utilities, Allete. GIP is also reportedly on the cusp of acquiring the major energy company, AES, according to sources familiar with the matter that spoke with Reuters. The Financial Times reported that the deal may be for $38 billion.
BlackRock referred the DCNF to Allete’s statement on regulators approving its partnership with GIP and declined to comment further for this story.
Allete’s statement notes that the impending partnership with the BlackRock-led group includes “guaranteed access to capital to fund ALLETE’s five-year plan for advancing transmission and renewable energy goals [and a] $50 million Clean Firm Technology Fund to support regional clean-energy projects and partnerships.”
The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) renewed BlackRock’s ability to own up to 20% of utility voting shares in April, with former FERC Commissioner Mark Christie stating that BlackRock “pledged not to use its holdings to influence utility management” and that utilities need the access to capital.
Christie also warned in September 2024 that “this is an issue that deserves much greater scrutiny” and that “the influence that large shareholders, BlackRock or otherwise, can potentially exert across the consumer-serving utility industry should not be underestimated.”
Blackstone has reportedly sought regulatory approval to buy out the Public Service Company of New Mexico and Texas New Mexico Power Co. recently, according to The Associated Press. The asset management giant also secured a 19.9% stake in a Northern Indiana public utility for over $2 billion in January 2024.
“Blackstone’s sustainability strategy prioritizes accelerating decarbonization by investing in the energy transition and driving value accretive emissions reduction in our portfolio,” Blackstone’s 2024 sustainability report states. “We believe the transition to cleaner energy creates meaningful investment opportunities for private capital. For over a decade, we have pursued attractive investments in companies and assets that are part of the global energy transition as part of our broader energy investing strategy.”
Blackstone also announced on Sept. 15 that private equity funds affiliated with Blackstone Energy Transition Partners will acquire the Pennsylvania-based Hill Top Energy Center natural gas plant for almost $1 billion. The company also announced in July that funds managed by Blackstone Infrastructure and Blackstone Real Estate would invest over $25 billion to help build out Pennsylvania’s energy infrastructure to support the AI “revolution.”
“Renewable” energy goals and ESG investment tend to align with emissions-reduction targets, with some power companies, utilities and states that set goals to cut emissions striving to retire conventional energy sources like coal plants. Isaac added that companies like American Electric Power, in which BlackRock owns a significant stake, have been decommissioning coal plants and replacing them with intermittent sources like solar.
“What happens is when the wind stops blowing and the sun stops shining, then you have to ramp those generational assets back up, and that’s when price spikes happen,” Isaac said.
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill professor of finance Greg Brown told the AP that the reason behind these buyouts are “very simple. Because there’s a lot of money to be made.”
Other experts devoted to consumer protection like Executive Director of Consumers’ Research Will Hild told the DCNF that investment companies like BlackRock stand to gain more than just a profit from these purchases.
“There is no world in which BlackRock’s ownership of American energy benefits ordinary American consumers,” Hild told the DCNF. “This is the same firm that proudly brought us the radical ESG rules and Net-Zero nonsense that forced all our energy bills to skyrocket. We wouldn’t have the scourge of woke capitalism without Larry Fink, who already controls nearly $13 trillion in assets and has been sued for violating anti-trust laws.”
ESG investors weigh a company by its social and environmental choices as well as its finances in a move that criticssay bogs down businesses with new costs while doing little to combat climate change. One August 2023 InfluenceMap report showed that as Republicans at the state level and in Congress ramped up their opposition to ESG-focused practices, BlackRock and other major U.S. asset managers decreased their support for climate-related resolutions.
BlackRock CEO Larry Fink also said in June 2023 that he no will no longer use the term ESG because it has been “politicized,” less than a year after he noted that climbing energy prices are “accelerating” the green energy transition.
“BlackRock has backpedaled on its ESG messaging and its aggressive, unapologetic imposition of ESG on everything they touch. But the leopard hasn’t changed its spots,” President of the Heartland Institute James Taylor told the DCNF. “It still has the same management group with the same values, and it’s still doing whatever it can to impose ESG on everything it touches, in actuality, if not in name.”
Taylor argued that whether BlackRock buys or acquires a large stake of a utility, it “can now assert itself over legislatures in dictating energy policy.”
Notably, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) and the Department of Justice (DOJ) threw their weight behind an antitrust lawsuit against major asset managers that alleges the firms colluded to tank coal production with their embrace of zero-emissions goals in May.
The lawsuit, backed by 11 state attorneys general, alleges that BlackRock and multiple other asset managers used their market power to suppress coal production, thereby hurting consumers by causing the price of coal to climb.
The DOJ and FTC’s “support for this baseless case undermines the Trump Administration’s goal of American energy independence,” a BlackRock spokesperson previously told the DCNF. “As we made clear in our earlier motion to dismiss, this case is trying to re-write antitrust law and is based on an absurd theory that coal companies conspired with their shareholders to reduce coal production.”
Blackstone did not respond to the DCNF’s multiple requests for comment.
All content created by the Daily Caller News Foundation, an independent and nonpartisan newswire service, is available without charge to any legitimate news publisher that can provide a large audience. All republished articles must include our logo, our reporter’s byline and their DCNF affiliation. For any questions about our guidelines or partnering with us, please contact licensing@dailycallernewsfoundation.org.
In a slow but steady retreat, the world’s most powerful financial institutions are abandoning their once-lauded climate pledges in the beginning of a long-overdue correction.
In a slow but steady retreat, the world’s most powerful financial institutions are abandoning their once-lauded climate pledges in the beginning of a long-overdue correction.
From BlackRock’s quiet exit to the mass defection of U.S. banking giants, the climate bandwagon is losing passengers. And what replaces it could finally bring a necessary focus on real-world developmental finance for both Western economies and the Global South.
In 2024, the U.S. banking sector staged a collective retreat from the Net Zero Banking Alliance (NZBA). Exiting the alliance were six of America’s largest banks – Goldman Sachs, Wells Fargo, Citigroup, Bank of America, Morgan Stanley and JPMorgan Chase.
Their reasons: legal and fiduciary concerns, coupled with mounting pressure from Republican-led states accusing the banks of violating antitrust laws by coordinating climate policies that could limit the financing of fossil fuel enterprises.
Wells Fargo went further, explicitly dropping its pledge to achieve “net-zero” and stating it would instead “meet clients where they are in their chosen energy and transition strategies.” HSBC diluted its 2050 goals, acknowledging the impracticality of abrupt decarbonization.
In January, BlackRock – the world’s largest asset manager with approximately $11.5 trillion under management – left the Net Zero Asset Managers (NZAM) initiative. BlackRock’s exit was a body blow to Glasgow Financial Alliance for Net Zero (GFANZ), the U.N.-backed coalition launched in 2021 to align institutions with decarbonization goals.
These reversals coincided with Trump-era policy shifts: rescinding clean energy subsidies, green-lighting fossil fuels and prioritizing energy security. Republican-led lawsuits, such as the one filed by Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton against BlackRock, Vanguard and State Street, alleged that climate-focused investment strategies suppress industries like coal. These political headwinds have made finance executives wary of aligning with the likes of GFANZ
On April 29, the Royal Bank of Canada (RBC) quietly abandoned its $500 billion commitment to decarbonization efforts. The reason? Canada’s updated Competition Act now treats exaggerated environmental claims as potential greenwashing – a criminal offense.
The delicious irony is that this announcement came just one day after Mark Carney – former U.N. climate finance czar and a founder of GFANZ – was elected Prime Minister of Canada.
Carney’s GFANZ, launched at COP26, boasted 450 firms managing $130 trillion. Today, it’s a ghost town. RBC’s exit epitomizes the alliance’s collapse. GFANZ demanded banks phase out fossil fuels. Instead, banks phased out GFANZ.
RBC said the new legal framework made it “infeasible” to quantify progress on the goal without risking regulatory breaches. The entire edifice of net-zero commitments – built on ambiguous projections and unverifiable metrics – has begun to collapse under the weight of the laws meant to enforce them.
Crying “betrayal,” critics of banks and asset managers departing climate coalitions lament a “backward slide.” But how could regulating atmospheric CO₂ reasonably be the job of your neighborhood bank?
Wall Street was never meant to be an environmental regulator. It is supposed to allocate capital where it generates value. And the green agenda, riddled with faulty science, speculative technologies and political overreach, simply does not qualify as valuable. The green exodus has exposed the folly of policymakers at the U.N. and other global institutions that coerced financial giants into a quixotic crusade bereft of rationality.
The world’s big banks have handed nearly $7 trillion in funding to the fossil fuel industry since 2016, the year when the Paris Agreement was formed to decapitate fossil fuel expansion. Critics decried this as an abandonment of climate goals, but for 2.2 billion households globally, it meant affordable energy and economic stability.
The exit from climate politics heralds a crucial return to prioritizing genuine economic development. Sluggishness in many Western economies is, in part, a consequence of misallocation by climate hysteria.
Some have questioned whether this shift is permanent, noting the powerful political forces that have driven the climate industrial complex may be disinclined to surrender. However, there is no doubt that to the extent financial institutions unshackle themselves from impractical climate pledges, they can refocus on supporting innovation, infrastructure and industries that generate real growth and jobs.
This commentary was first published at RealClearEnergy on May 28, 2025.
Vijay Jayaraj is a Science and Research Associate at the CO₂ Coalition, Arlington, Virginia. He holds an M.S. in environmental sciences from the University of East Anglia and a postgraduate degree in energy management from Robert Gordon University, both in the U.K., and a bachelor’s in engineering from Anna University, India.
Writing shortly before President Trump’s return to the White House, Peter Thiel hailed the election as an apokálypsis, an unveiling, of the ancien régime’s secrets. “The new administration’s revelations need not justify vengefulness,” Thiel wrote. “But for reconciliation, there must first be truth.” The early weeks of Trump’s second term have been apocalyptic for some of progressives’ favorite acronyms such as DEI and USAID. So far, arguably the most damaging, ESG — an approach to finance derived from the UN’s Principles for Responsible Investment — and its spawn, stakeholder capitalism — which demotes shareholders to one of many groups (employees, customers, suppliers, and the environment) that companies should prioritize — have evaded their rendezvous with truth.
Writing shortly before President Trump’s return to the White House, Peter Thiel hailed the election as an apokálypsis, an unveiling, of the ancien régime’s secrets. “The new administration’s revelations need not justify vengefulness,” Thiel wrote. “But for reconciliation, there must first be truth.” The early weeks of Trump’s second term have been apocalyptic for some of progressives’ favorite acronyms such as DEI and USAID. So far, arguably the most damaging, ESG — an approach to finance derived from the UN’s Principles for Responsible Investment — and its spawn, stakeholder capitalism — which demotes shareholders to one of many groups (employees, customers, suppliers, and the environment) that companies should prioritize — have evaded their rendezvous with truth. That needs to change, because the last four years saw an unprecedented and sustained attack on America’s system of shareholder capitalism.
A year ago, the Delaware Court of Chancery struck down the ten-year performance-driven compensation package the Tesla board had awarded Elon Musk, a ruling reaffirmed in December despite the package having gained overwhelming shareholder approval a second time. Three years earlier, in May 2021, shareholders in ExxonMobil voted to put three directors on the board from a minuscule activist investor, Engine No.1, with a mandate to drive America’s largest oil company out of the oil and gas business and thereby destroy shareholder value.
The apparent paradox — no, let’s put that more strongly: The perversity of shareholders voting against their own apparent interests, which is what happened at ExxonMobil, has its own well-deserved apokálypsis in Andy Puzder’s new book, A Tyranny for the Good of Its Victims: The Ugly Truth about Stakeholder Capitalism (Encounter Books, January 2025). Central to Puzder’s account of the attempt to destroy shareholder capitalism is the role of the Big Three asset managers — BlackRock, Vanguard, and State Street Global Advisors (SSGA), whose enormous size derives from the popularity of index funds among institutional investors and private investors alike.
Fundamental to the success of shareholder capitalism is the alignment of investors’ financial interests with the success of the businesses they’re shareholders in, which in turn drives economic growth and rising living standards. As Robert Rubin, President Clinton’s Treasury secretary for most of his second term, recently wrote in the Wall Street Journal, “While every company functions differently, businesses share the overarching goal of strong profitability over time. That focus is fundamental to our market economy.”
That link between the interest of the investor and the company is broken with index investing. “Don’t look for the needle in the haystack. Just buy the haystack!” John Bogle, the pioneer of index investing and founder of Vanguard, advised. The success of index funds gives rise to the anomalous situation where the Big Three have the most votes in a huge number of American companies but where their financial interest in the individual success of those businesses is so attenuated as to be virtually non-existent.
Puzder accuses the Big Three of corrupting capitalism. The corruption is not about anything as vulgar as money, it’s about power — in Puzder’s words, the Big Three’s use of their “unaccountable power to accomplish their ends.” Puzder exposes the speciousness of ESG as an investment methodology and how the Big Three’s inflicting ESG on businesses has real-world harms. An example is the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) in March 2023. Each of the Big Three had voted in favor of all SVB board candidates at SVB’s annual shareholder meeting in April 2022, even though BlackRock’s consulting arm had given SVB “a gentleman’s C” for its risk controls and found SVB lagging behind similar banks in eleven out of eleven factors in January 2022. SVB did not have a chief risk officer for nine critical months, and its sole board director with the necessary banking expertise, Thomas King, a former Barclays Investment Banking CEO, was excluded from SVB’s risk management committee.
Despite these warning signs, SVB was still included in BlackRock’s ESG-based fund products. As Puzder observes, “BlackRock’s major concern was not primarily corporate governance — it was diversity, and SVB gave BlackRock what it wanted.” (Puzder on DEI is priceless: “Three lies in one acronym.”) There’s no real reason to think that SSGA or (at least for a while) Vanguard saw things any differently. As Steve Soukup writes in his review, the “G” is often mistakenly viewed as the acceptable letter in ESG and goes on to quote Puzder that the “G” should be a “D” “because it stands for selecting corporate board members based on ‘diversity’ rather than merit or value to the company.”
But wasn’t ESG meant to identify risks that traditional financial analysis allegedly ignores? Not according to MSCI ESG Research, which had given SVB’s parent an above-average “A” rating. One of its vice presidents explained, “E, S, G does not cover core financial risks. We’re looking to assess financially-relevant environmental, social and governance factors, not financially-relevant financial factors.” Got that? Yup. It’s total hogwash.
Puzder puts this in the context of the Big Three’s willingness to use its voting power to bully boards into compliance with their dictates. In BlackRock CEO Larry Fink’s 2020 letter to CEOs — Puzder’s textural analysis of Fink’s annual epistolary emissions is outstanding — he warned boards, “When a company is not effectively addressing a material issue, its directors should be held accountable.” And that’s what BlackRock did. In 2021, BlackRock voted against the reelection of 1,862 directors at 975 companies based on a lack of board diversity.
In his 2019 letter, “Purpose and Profit” — earning Puzder’s rejoinder, “Profit is the purpose for which businesses exist” — Fink asserted that “society,” meaning himself, was “looking to companies to address pressing social and economic problems.” Later that year, the Business Roundtable (BRT) produced its now notorious “Statement on the Purpose of a Corporation,” about which Alex Gorsky, its chair of corporate governance and Johnson & Johnson CEO, confessed, “There were times when I felt like Thomas Jefferson.”
The document produced by the BRT’s Thomas Jefferson reversed the long-standing view of corporate purpose famously set out by Milton Friedman in a 1970 New York Timesarticle. Puzder — his book is dedicated to Friedman’s memory — points out that the Big Three are the largest shareholders in virtually every company that signed the BRT statement, and in the case of Gorsky’s Johnson & Johnson, control a combined 23% of the stock. “It may have been a coincidence that the BRT issues its shareholder-capitalism concession in a year when BlackRock alone ‘voted against or withheld votes from 4,800 directors at 2,700 different companies’ — but I seriously doubt it,” Puzder writes.
Fink’s next two letters were even more extreme. “Every government, company and shareholder must confront climate change,” Fink wrote in bold type in his 2020 letter to CEOs, warning that climate change was causing “a fundamental reshaping of finance.” He went further in his 2021 letter, saying, “It’s important to recognize that net zero demands a transformation of the entire economy.” Who was demanding net zero? It wasn’t Congress. Congress has never passed a climate law with decarbonization targets, let alone a net-zero law. It was Fink who demanded — “we are asking” — that companies prepare net-zero plans and incorporate them into their long-term strategy.
There was real menace behind those words. In his 2020 letter, Fink had written, again in bold type, that BlackRock would be “increasingly disposed to vote against management and board directors when companies are not making sufficient progress on sustainability-related disclosures and the business practices and plans underlying them.” Fink went on to note that BlackRock had voted against or withheld votes from 4,800 directors at 2,700 different companies. That year, BlackRock’s stewardship team disclosed it had identified 244 companies making insufficient progress integrating climate risk into their business models or disclosures and had taken “voting action” against 53 of them. “This was an exercise of raw and absolute financial power,” Puzder writes. “If you were the CEO of one of the thousands of companies in which BlackRock invested the message was clear — Resistance is futile.”
One of those companies is, of course, ExxonMobil. Justifying its value-destroying, anti-fossil-fuel vote for the three Engine No.1 directors, BlackRock said it had a long history of multi-year engagement with the company on a range of issues including “oversight of climate risk” and had engaged with Exxon no fewer than twelve times over the previous year. “That is a lot of ‘stewardship,’” Puzder writes. “As it turns out, for U.S. and global consumers, international security, and Exxon’s shareholders, forcing Exxon to reduce oil production and advance net-zero policies was unequivocally the wrong plan.”
The Big Three are unlike other investors who make a bad call and suffer the consequences in their investment performance or who vote their values and accept the hit to their returns. For index fund providers, owning individual stocks and the proxies vested in them is an unavoidable by-product of Bogle’s buying the haystack. The Big Three’s vast accumulation of proxies creates the temptation for index managers to exercise power without responsibility and pursue ESG as politics by other means. The traditional assumption that shareholders were solely or primarily interested in financial return was not one that could be safely made in their case. That might have been true of their clients, whose money they were managing — the “real” (underlying) shareholders — but their investment managers had bigger fish to fry such as saving the planet.
Of them, despite some verbal backtracking by Fink, only Vanguard has shown the necessary awareness of the dangers this creates. “We don’t believe that we should dictate company strategy,” Vanguard’s then CEO, Tim Buckley, told the Financial Times in February 2023. “It would be hubris to presume that we know the right strategy for the thousands of companies that Vanguard invests with. We just want to make sure that risks are being appropriately disclosed and that every company is playing by the rules.”
Puzder has been a leading light in the resistance against ESG, which, especially at state level, was already proving far from futile even prior to Trump’s return to the White House. It’s a mark of progress that, as early as June 2023, Fink had dropped the term ESG, but remains committed to discussing “decarbonization” with companies that it describes as “critical to the transition to a low-carbon economy,” including those with carbon-intensive business models. DEI lives on in BlackRock’s “engagement” with companies over their “human capital management” including efforts to foster a diverse and inclusive workforce culture. “If you believe the collectivists will discontinue their efforts to use their massive financial leverage in order to achieve their authoritarian vision of utopia, you are wrong,” Puzder warns.
A May 2024 Bloomberg editorial board opinion piece echoed Buckley’s view in arguing that the Big Three’s stewardship “should be restricted to ensuring effective corporate governance and rigorously documented and disclosed.” Bringing about such a restriction in a legal settlement should be a key aim of litigation against the Big Three brought by states such as Texas. “Stewardship is actually more effective and more insidious than proxy voting, as it occurs in C-suite conference rooms and on Zoom calls, beyond the purview of both investors and those who would protect their interests,” Puzder says. The only durable and effective remedy is to radically curtail the scope of issues on which index funds can cast their proxies so that they are cast in favor of board proposals except for those ensuring more effective corporate governance or where adoption of a proposal would result in a demonstrable increase in shareholder returns.
Puzder himself says of ESG’s opponents, “We are not going away.” On January 23, President Trump nominated him to be U.S. ambassador to the EU. If confirmed by the Senate, Puzder will confront another threat to American capitalism in the form of the EU Sustainable Finance Disclosure Regulation and the EU taxonomy on sustainable activities and the ESG requirements they impose on European investors in American companies. If Brussels wants to gain a preview of the nominee, they would do well to read Puzder’s book, as should anyone who cares about the future of shareholder capitalism in America.
RUPERT DARWALL is a senior fellow of the National Center for Energy Analytics and author of The Age of Error: Net Zero and the Destruction of the West (publication later this year by Encounter Books).
This article was originally published by RealClearEnergy and made available via RealClearWire.
In clear preparation for President Trump’s second term, six of America’s largest banks – Citigroup, Bank of America, Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan, Morgan Stanley, and Wells Fargo – have made an exodus from the leading woke climate alliance.
In clear preparation for President Trump’s second term, six of America’s largest banks – Citigroup, Bank of America, Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan, Morgan Stanley, and Wells Fargo – have made an exodus from the leading woke climate alliance.
The UN-sponsored Net Zero Banking Alliance (NZBA) requires leading global banks to put climate extremism over good business by aligning their investments, lending, and capital market activities with the goal of net-zero greenhouse gas emissions levels by 2050.
Disguising itself as a philanthropic endeavor essential for the “sustainable finance agenda,” the NZBA functions as an agent of the left’s radical climate agenda. It wrongfully prioritizes virtue-signaling climate boondoggles. Thankfully, data suggests that members have engaged primarily only in noisy financial virtue signaling. Altering investment strategy to advance climatism will hinder economic growth and destroy shareholder value.
These banks should be commended for waking up and walking away from this woke climate pact that does nothing for the environment or the American people. Their withdrawal is a win for the growing pendulum swing against the progressive takeover of American industry under the banner of environmental, social, and governance standards (ESGs).
In the name of “social justice” and “progress,” ESGs wreak havoc on the economy. ESG subsidizes unreliable energy leading to blackouts, raises costs on American families, and reduces good financial investments, while discouraging innovation in the name of climate alarmism and advancing “social justice.” These “standards” undermine America’s competitiveness on the world stage, leave us more vulnerable to China and make life more difficult for American families.
The recent whiplash against NZBA’s ESG agenda is having a resounding effect. BlackRock announced last week that it was pulling out of a similar UN-sponsored climate initiative: the Net Zero Asset Managers initiative. This decision comes in the wake of continued scrutiny around BlackRock’s history of aggressive ESG investment strategies.
The incoming Trump administration is likely to continue amplifying pressure on pro-ESG companies by countering woke ESG practices and supporting antitrust violation investigations of ESG zealots.
For the past two years, several Republican state attorneys general have threatened legal action and opened investigations into ESG-compliant companies. Agreements like the NZBA often require collaboration across different banks, which can limit competition and naturally raise antitrust concerns.
By committing to a net-zero action plan, banks are essentially promising to fully boycott the fossil fuel industry by 2050, which could compromise their duties to investors and customers. In Texas, Attorney General Ken Paxton conducted a 2023 review of major US banks under a Texas law prohibiting governmental entities from entering into business with companies boycotting the oil and gas industries. He closed the probe following the banks’ withdrawal from NZBA.
Still, the work has just begun. Undoing the damage will take time. The recent mass withdrawal from the NZBA is encouraging, but the gesture doesn’t necessarily signify total victory over ESG.
Although Bank of America withdrew from the NZBA, it remains publicly committed to the net zero platform and principles. Similarly, Citigroup said that it also remains “committed to reaching net-zero” and announced that while it was pulling out of the NZBA, it will still support the Glasgow Financial Alliance for Net Zero, NZBA’s parent alliance that Citigroup helped found.
To truly regain trust with American consumers, these banks must demonstrate a renewed commitment to their fiduciary duties to shareholders and depositors. Loans and investments should be made in pursuit of maximizing value rather than forging virtue-signaling global alliances with others’ resources.
Time will tell if these recent moves are simply media stunts to avoid the ire of the incoming President Trump or if a true realignment of principles and ethics is occurring in the financial sector. Either way, this news is a win for economic freedom and prosperity and is yet another step in neutralizing the political correctness and radical wokeism holding corporate America hostage.
n recent weeks, the climate policy landscape has shifted significantly, with institutions, governments, and corporations beginning to step back from the ambitious but economically questionable climate commitments they made over the last decade. Two major developments underscore this retreat: the U.S. Federal Reserve’s exit from the Network of Central Banks and Supervisors for Greening the Financial System (NGFS) and BlackRock’s withdrawal from the Net Zero Asset Managers initiative (NZAM) and it’s subsequent suspension of activities. These high-profile decisions, along with similar moves globally, suggest growing recognition of the economic damage wrought by costly, ineffective, and overreaching climate policies.
In a move that has sent shockwaves through climate advocacy circles, the U.S. Federal Reserve announced its withdrawal from the NGFS—a coalition of central banks established in 2017 to address climate-related risks in financial systems. Citing its limited statutory mandate, the Fed made clear that it was not responsible for shaping climate policy. Chair Jerome Powell has repeatedly emphasized this point, stating that climate matters belong to Congress, not the central bank.
The NGFS, claimed lofty goals of integrating climate risks into monetary policy, and has grown increasingly politicized. Its shift toward broader mandates—essentially promoting green agendas over sound economic principles—clashes with the Fed’s responsibility to maintain monetary stability. The exit comes amidst broader U.S. skepticism of climate-focused regulations, particularly in the financial sector, where their potential to disrupt industries and inflate costs is well-documented.
BlackRock, the Financial Behemoth, Exits the Climate Stage
Adding to the wave of institutional departures, BlackRock, the world’s largest asset manager, recently withdrew from the NZAM, which then collapsed. This coalition aimed to align financial investments with the nebulous goal of achieving net-zero carbon emissions. Yet, BlackRock’s exit reflects a broader reality: these climate initiatives are not only politically fraught but also deeply misaligned with financial performance and client interests.
BlackRock faced mounting criticism, especially from Republican-led states in the U.S., for prioritizing environmental, social, and governance (ESG) initiatives over fiduciary responsibilities. Florida, Texas, and other states accused BlackRock of undermining traditional energy industries and pulling resources away from economically viable ventures. Tennessee recently pummelled BlackRock in court. These pressures have created a domino effect, with other institutions also reconsidering their commitments to net-zero coalitions
Corporations Abandon Ambitious Climate Pledges
The retreat is not limited to financial institutions. In the corporate world, companies like BP and Shell have quietly scaled back their green initiatives, prioritizing short-term profitability over unrealistic carbon reduction goals. BP recently spun off its offshore wind projects, while Shell drastically cut back on renewable investments. Both companies have signaled a return to traditional energy sources as energy security and profitability take precedence over climate narratives, driven by a foundational flaw in climate policy: the failure to acknowledge economic realities. Renewable energy remains heavily reliant on subsidies, while oil and gas—despite decades of demonization—continue to drive global economies. Attempting to prematurely phase out fossil fuels without viable replacements has proven disastrous, with Europe’s energy crisis serving as a glaring example.
The Cost of Climate Ambition: A Reckoning for Governments
The global retreat from climate commitments signals a long-overdue recognition of the real costs of these policies. Nations that enthusiastically embraced net-zero goals are now grappling with rising energy prices, faltering economies, and public discontent. Germany, once hailed as a green energy pioneer, faces skyrocketing electricity costs and industrial flight, as energy-intensive industries relocate to more affordable regions. Similarly, the UK government’s climate policies have drawn ire from both businesses and households burdened by rising living costs.
The U.S. isn’t immune to these effects. A Congressional Budget Office report estimated that clean energy subsidies enacted under the Inflation Reduction Act will cost $825 billion over the next decade—a staggering price tag for policies that are unlikely to achieve meaningful reductions in global temperatures. These costs disproportionately impact working-class households, who bear the brunt of higher energy bills and inflation.
At the heart of this shift is a recognition that climate policies have devolved into a costly exercise in virtue signaling. They demand enormous economic sacrifices with little measurable impact on global temperatures. Worse, these policies often exacerbate existing challenges, such as energy insecurity, supply chain disruptions, and inflation.
Additionally, the politicization of climate science and policy has fueled resistance. Increasingly, institutions and governments are questioning the wisdom of aligning with initiatives that prioritize ideological goals over economic and practical considerations. As the Federal Reserve’s exit from the NGFS demonstrates, organizations tasked with specific mandates cannot afford to be sidetracked by climate-related ambitions outside their purview.
The Way Forward: A Pragmatic Approach to Energy and Policy
The unraveling of these grand climate coalitions provides an opportunity to reassess priorities. The global economy needs energy policies grounded in reality—not utopian ideals. Policymakers should abandon sweeping mandates and instead focus on ensuring energy reliability, affordability, and innovation.
Ultimately, the retreat from climate policies underscores an uncomfortable truth: these initiatives are costly, ineffective, and increasingly unsustainable. The financial and corporate worlds are waking up to this reality, and the broader public is not far behind. As more institutions step away from the climate bandwagon, one hopes this marks the beginning of a more rational, economically sound approach to energy and environmental challenges.
In a high-stakes showdown that captured the attention of investors nationwide, the State of Tennessee has reached a settlement with BlackRock, Inc. regarding its use of Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) factors in the management of U.S. mutual funds. While skeptics might dismiss the agreement as symbolic, a closer inspection reveals an important victory for investor rights, transparency, and accountability in the financial sector.
In a high-stakes showdown that captured the attention of investors nationwide, the State of Tennessee has reached a settlement with BlackRock, Inc. regarding its use of Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) factors in the management of U.S. mutual funds. While skeptics might dismiss the agreement as symbolic, a closer inspection reveals an important victory for investor rights, transparency, and accountability in the financial sector.
The Allegations and Context
At the heart of this case was the assertion that BlackRock had violated Tennessee’s Trade Practices Act (TCPA) by failing to adequately disclose the role of ESG factors in its decision-making processes. ESG investing has been a polarizing topic, with proponents hailing it as a forward-thinking approach to sustainable finance and critics decrying it as a distraction from fiduciary duties. The lawsuit filed by Tennessee Attorney General Jonathan Skrmetti aimed to address these tensions, arguing that investors deserved clarity and honesty about the criteria shaping their portfolios.
What the Settlement Requires
Enhanced Transparency in Proxy Voting: BlackRock has committed to casting proxy votes for “In-Scope Funds” independently, without influence from external organizations, and will disclose the rationale behind its votes on a quarterly basis. This is a significant step forward in demystifying how fund managers make decisions that directly impact shareholders’ returns.
Investor-Centric Communication: The settlement mandates that BlackRock refrain from using ambiguous ESG terminology when communicating with Tennessee investors. Instead, the company must adopt clear, legally defined language such as “financial materiality” to ensure that investors can make informed decisions.
Removal of ESG Ratings: Within 90 days, BlackRock must strip ESG ratings from its U.S. product pages for In-Scope Funds. This move underscores a commitment to prioritize financial performance over non-financial considerations when presenting investment options to clients.
Audits and Compliance Oversight: Over the next three proxy seasons, BlackRock will undergo third-party audits of its compliance with the agreement’s terms. The audits will examine whether BlackRock is genuinely upholding its fiduciary duty to prioritize investors’ financial interests.
Public Disclosure of Climate-Focused Memberships: BlackRock will publish information about its membership in climate-focused organizations on its corporate website. This measure promotes accountability and allows investors to assess whether such affiliations align with their values and financial goals.
Why This Settlement Matters
This agreement serves as a blueprint for restoring trust in financial institutions. By addressing the controversies surrounding ESG investing, the settlement strikes a balance between innovation and accountability. It neither demonizes ESG principles nor gives them free rein; instead, it holds fund managers to their core responsibility—maximizing shareholder value.
Furthermore, the settlement demonstrates the power of state-level legal actions to influence corporate governance on a national scale. As more states scrutinize the practices of financial giants, the message is clear: investors deserve honesty, transparency, and accountability.
Addressing Criticisms
Some critics may argue that the settlement lets BlackRock off the hook by dismissing the claims without prejudice. However, this overlooks the significant commitments BlackRock has made to reform its practices. The settlement includes clear mechanisms for reasserting the dismissed claims if BlackRock fails to comply, ensuring that the agreement has teeth.
Moreover, by requiring BlackRock to implement these reforms over three years, the settlement allows for meaningful, lasting changes rather than short-term fixes. The inclusion of audits and public disclosures further bolsters its enforceability.
A Step Forward for Investors
In an era where ESG controversies dominate headlines, this settlement offers a refreshing approach. It empowers investors with the information they need to make informed decisions while holding financial institutions accountable for their actions. As other states consider similar measures, Tennessee has set a precedent that balances innovation with investor protection.
While no settlement is perfect, this agreement represents a significant victory for transparency, accountability, and the integrity of financial markets. For Tennessee investors—and indeed, all investors across the country—it’s a step in the right direction.
Asset management behemoth BlackRock wrote a letter to institutional investors Thursday announcing its exit from an emissions-focused investor group, according to the Financial Times (FT).
Asset management behemoth BlackRock wrote a letter to institutional investors Thursday announcing its exit from an emissions-focused investor group, according to the Financial Times (FT).
The firm, which manages over $10 trillion and has been a leader in environmental, social and governance (ESG) investing, has left the Net Zero Asset Managers (NZAM) coalition — a United Nations–sponsored collection of financial services companies that have pledged to achieve net-zero portfolios by 2050 or sooner, the FT reported. The move comes less than two weeks before President-elect Donald Trump, who plans to embrace fossil fuels in his second term, takes office, and follows the exits of a slew of other corporations, including Goldman Sachs Group, Wells Fargo & Co., Citigroup, Bank of America, Morgan Stanley and JPMorgan Chase & Co. (RELATED: UN Reportedly Moves To Unlock Tens Of Millions In Climate Funding For Country Run By Terrorists)
In the letter to investors, vice-chair Philipp Hildebrand wrote that the asset manager’s membership in NZAM had “caused confusion regarding BlackRock’s practices and subjected us to legal inquiries from various public officials,” according to the FT.
The firm began its ESG initiative in 2020, with CEO Larry Fink stating that “climate risk is investment risk” and that climate change would spark a “fundamental reallocation of capital.” However, the world’s largest asset manager exit has been backpedaling on its ESG efforts as of late, only supporting about 4% of the 493 environmental and social investment proposals shareholders put forward between the end of June 2023 and the end of June 2024, down from a rate of 47% in 2021.
BlackRock has also walked back some of its diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) efforts, editing their DEI language to be less racially oriented.
Fellow investment firm Vanguard left NZAM in 2022, while financial services firm State Street remains in the environmental coalition.
“The news of BlackRock’s departure from NZAM should be music to the ears of every American consumer,” Will Hild, executive director of conservative nonprofit Consumers’ Research, told the Daily Caller News Foundation. “NZAM is an illegitimate cartel of asset managers pushing harmful and costly net zero policies across the entire economy. The activities of NZAM and its members raise prices on Americans everywhere from the gas pump to the grocery store.”
When reached for comment, BlackRock referred the DCNF to a report confirming their departure from NZAM.
All content created by the Daily Caller News Foundation, an independent and nonpartisan newswire service, is available without charge to any legitimate news publisher that can provide a large audience. All republished articles must include our logo, our reporter’s byline and their DCNF affiliation. For any questions about our guidelines or partnering with us, please contact licensing@dailycallernewsfoundation.org.
Such is the phase change of the Trump win, the largest banks in the USA, JP Morgan and Morgan Chase have now joined Goldman Sachs, Wells Fargo the Bank of America, and Citigroup.
Analysts have said the withdrawals are an attempt to head off “anti-woke” attacks from rightwing US politicians, which are expected to escalate when Trump is sworn in as the country’s 47th president in just under a fortnight.
The giant super-squid of asset management is also thinking of leaving the UN Net Zero Alliance.
BlackRock — which for years has courted controversy with its focus on so-called ESG, or Environmental Social Governance investing — is considering an exit of the so-called “Net Zero” coalition of top corporations who pledge to reach zero-carbon emissions by 2050, The Post has learned.
BlackRock’s likely departure is more significant [than all the other banks]. The world’s largest investment fund, with more than $10 trillion in assets under management, was a leader in ESG investing, with its top executives including Fink evangelizing on the need to use the company’s investing might to force corporations to reduce their carbon footprint.
Mum’s the word:
BlackRock press officials declined comment. A rep for State Street and JPMorgan didn’t return a call for comment. A press official for the alliance declined to comment.
Their lawyers will have beaten them into silence. If the world is facing a crisis they look like cowards, and if the world isn’t facing a crisis they look like crooks for abusing clients funds for ideological quests or worse, traitorous sell-outs to the global oligarchs.
As I said, the Net Zero Banking Alliance was the UN-banker cabal that were colluding to use $130 trillion dollars in assets to bully the first world into sabotaging their economies by buying expensive, unreliable Net Zero electricity. It was dangerously close to being a proto World Government. The club effectively could decide national policies on who could build competitive electricity grids, and who had to do the fantasia plan to control the storms of 2100 with their electricity grid in 2024.
You must be logged in to post a comment.