Hypocrisy of ‘Income Inequality’ & ‘Climate Change’ Activism — ESG Series : Part 2
From Oil & Gas to Renewable Energy — the same set of investment & pension funds own all of the world’s largest global companies. And yet the pursuit of Renewable Energy is touted as solution for achieving lowering income disparity by climate and ESG activists!.
Someone in my network shared this post that claims that the world’s richest 1% account for more carbon emissions that the poorest 66%. The post goes on to cite UK’s push for more oil & gas exploration as a regressive move, and makes associations between income inequality and fossils fuel mining.
It completely beats me how renewable energy will lead to more equitable income distribution. No data, no citations of case studies making that association… only assertions that if we spend on clean energy we would have more income distribution equity. So i googled.
I googled for top Wind Energy companies globally and who owned them. Here’s what i found in 2 minutes:
Who are the top wind asset owners?
Who owns NextEra Energy, Inc. (NEE)?
Vanguard, Blackrock, JP Morgan, …. its the same suspects. With some variation, they own everything from Clean Energy to Fossil Fuel companies. But i wanted to cross-check. So i googled further and asked:
What oil & gas companies are part of Blackrock’s portfolio?
I also found another another website which lists BlackRock in the 2022 Hall of Shame for being the largest owner of Oil & Gas companies globally, investing in civilian gun manufacturers & retails and in military weapons companies.
Then i thought let me also check for who owns #Rosebank — the oil & gas mining field cleared by UK.
It turns out, it is owned by Equinor — a Norwegian State Owned energy company.
The last i recall, Norway is touted as one of the pristine examples of European socialist-capitalism with equity in income distribution, with extensive investments in clear energy, education, insurance, etc. US Presidential Election 2024 Candidate, Bernie Sanders, often touts northern European countries as examples of what US could become. Here’s what Google told me:
Hypocrisy Galore
- Among the most touted European welfare state — a pristine example of a more refined form of ‘capitalism’ with one of the world’s lowest income disparity— owns an energy company that gets berated by climate activists.
- They make assertions, without data or citations, that investments in clean energy would lead to lower income disparity
- The world’s largest Renewable Energy companies have the same list of owners as the world’s largest Oil & Gas companies.
And to top it all, these companies are the ones guiding the ESG mandates for environmentalism and less income disparities:
