ESG - Environmental, Social and Governance

— Apr 21, 2023
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The Impracticality of Standardizing ESG Reporting

The Impracticality of Standardizing ESG Reporting is the latest essay in the Institute’s series on the ESG (environmental, social and governance) movement. It finds that mandating a uniform set of ESG reporting standards across all public companies would be extremely costly because of the difficulties defining ESG materiality and the scope of ESG standards, measuring and aggregating ESG information, and enforcing ESG standards.

— Mar 10, 2023
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How Banning Carbon Fuels and Synthetic Products Will Hurt the Environment

How Banning Carbon Fuels and Synthetic Products Will Hurt the Environment is a new essay in the Institute’s series on the ESG (environmental, social and governance) movement. It shows how the development of carbon fuels, refined petroleum products and synthetics such as plastics and composite materials have made it possible to meet the needs of growing and increasingly wealthier populations, while gradually diminishing the human footprint on the landscape. Banning them, especially when the world’s population is now much larger than when they first displaced other inputs and technologies, will only recreate and exacerbate the problems they once solved.

— Mar 3, 2023
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Environmental Markets vs. Environmental Mandates: Capturing Prosperity and Environmental Quality (ESG: Myths and Realities)

Environmental Markets vs. Environmental Mandates: Capturing Prosperity and Environmental Quality is a new essay in the Institute’s series on the ESG (environmental, social and governance) movement. It shows that the same institutions that promote economic growth—secure property rights and the rule of law—also promote environmental quality because the former creates the conditions for environmental improvement by raising the demand for improved environmental quality and by making resources—natural and human—more abundant.

— Feb 3, 2023
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The Circular Economy: (Re)discovering the Free Market

The Circular Economy: (Re)discovering the Free Market is the latest installment in the Institute’s essay series on the ESG (environmental, social and governance) movement. It documents how current calls for a centrally-planned “circular economy” ignore the historical evidence that shows, in fact, entrepreneurs and market economies have been innovating ways to re-use industrial byproducts and waste for centuries.

— Jan 20, 2023
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ESG Is Mainly Top-Down Planning by Elites

ESG Is Mainly Top-Down Planning by Elites is a new essay in the Institute’s series on the Environmental, Social and Governance movement. In it, adjunct scholar Matt Lau details how the refocus of business and financial activity toward ESG concerns has been pushed from above by government bodies and politically powerful organizations at the expense of individual investors.

— Jan 12, 2023
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ESG is Corporate Socialism

ESG is Corporate Socialism is the latest installment in the Institute’s series on the Environmental, Social and Governance movement. It details how ESG undermines the duty of business executives to act in the best interests of the corporation, and in so doing, actually undermines capitalism itself.