Kevin Stocklin on ESG Driving Societal Change Through Government Cooperation: Part 2

Kevin Stocklin, writer and producer of "The Shadow State," in Washington, on Aug. 18, 2023.Alejandro Heredia/The Epoch Times

The environmental, social and governance (ESG) ideology is a system of control that can control society through the corporate world in ways that governments in the West cannot, according to Kevin Stocklin, writer and producer of “The Shadow State.”

“It is very interesting to try to assess the motives in all of this,” Mr. Stocklin said in an interview to EpochTV’s “American Thought Leaders.” He mentioned two aspects of motivation for following ESG practices, ideology, and profit.

Mr. Stocklin thinks there are true believers in the ESG cause, business people who believe that climate change and social justice are causes they should fight for, and, therefore, think of themselves as acting morally, or as the “high priests” of society, as he put it.

There is certainly also the motive of profit. Companies that go along with the ESG ideology find that they can do better financially. Government “shines on them,” as Mr. Stocklin put it, they get more subsidies, and they got more easily the COVID relief funds. BlackRock, for example, was made by the government to be a gatekeeper for the COVID funds.

BlackRock Ties With Government

Ties between BlackRock and the Biden administration run deep, as there is a “revolving door,” as Mr. Stocklin put it, between the two. Many officials go back and forth from BlackRock to the government, and the border between private and public seems to have been blurred.

Some examples are Eric Van Nostrand, Brian Deese, Adewale Adeyemo, and Michael Pyle.

Eric Van Nostrand was head of research for sustainable investments and multi-asset strategies in BlackRock, and joined the Treasury Department in 2022. As of July 2023, Mr. Van Nostrand was acting assistant secretary for economic policy for the Treasury Borrowing Advisory Committee. Bloomberg reported that he would become a senior adviser on economic issues tied to Russia and Ukraine.

Brian Deese is the former head of sustainability at BlackRock who now runs the National Economic Council, and Adewale Adeyemo, former chief of staff to BlackRock’s chief executive, is now the deputy Treasury secretary. Michael Pyle was the global chief investment strategist at BlackRock, and is now the chief economic advisor to Vice President Kamala Harris. All four also worked with the Obama administration, then went to BlackRock, and then returned to the government.

Through the revolving door, Dalia Blass, a Securities  and Exchange Commission official, went to lead the external affairs at BlackRock; Thomas Donilon, a national security advisor to President Barack Obama, went on to be chairman of BlackRock’s research business.

Bloomberg has reported that “BlackRock is becoming one of Wall Street’s key D.C. conduits,” after the Van Nostrand hire. The firm has tapped numerous other government officials from the Obama administration. BlackRock has also many investments in China and ties with the Chinese Communist Party, according to Mr. Stocklin.

Goldman Sachs Group Inc. was also associated with this revolving door practice.

ESG and Consumers

“There are two elements of society that have absolutely no say anymore—they are the consumers and they are the end investors, the people who put up the money,” Mr. Stocklin said.

A difference between end investors and the investment funds is that the investment funds get their fee, which is based on their companies, which are usually grouped in indexes with a total value. When this total value increases, the fee increases proportionally, and companies with higher ESG scores currently give bigger fees. The end investors on the other hand, lose 10 percent of their money if the company’s shares lose 10 percent of their value, a phenomenon seen with Anheuser-Busch’s ESG promotion for example.

ESG was also a way to revive the asset management industry, according to Mr. Stocklin, as the asset-management firms have the opportunity to earn bigger fees now, fees that they were losing from the shift to index funds, for which the process of selecting and managing was becoming more automatic, he said.

Other jobs have also sprung up around ESG, such as ESG rating agencies, ESG consultancies on how a business can increase its ESG score, and ESG banking. So, there are many other people who are depended now on ESG, and want to see it going.

ESG and Government

A way ESG is forced onto society is through government enacting laws promoting ESG, that private companies then have to follow. Two thirds of the major American auto manufacturers are to become electric in the near future after the American government’s new regulations, and tens of millions of dollars are to be given to private companies in subsidies for building EV (electrical vehicle) plants.

For example, Ford was pushed to transition to EVs, according to Mr. Stocklin, without that being the will of its customers.

Consumers are losing their choice, not because there is a law prohibiting a certain product but because no company is producing that product any more.

Similar things have happened with gas stoves, refrigerators, and washing machines, Mr. Stocklin said.

“The Achilles’ heel of this whole movement is simply shedding light on it, is simply to ask questions,” he added, giving the example of the mining industry. This industry cannot do enough mining for all the cobalt and lithium needed for EV batteries and there is not a single region in America that can charge all these EVs, according to his research.

In that way, just by shedding light on it, the narrative falls apart.

Another example is that the environmental part of ESG can help the environment become cleaner. But how is it helping it? By polluting the air to make batteries, and by moving 250 tons of earth for finding the minerals needed for battery production, according to Mr. Stocklin. There is also slave labor involved in Congo for the making of the batteries.

The materials are then shipped to China, where coal-fire plants produce the energy to refine them.

An electric car needs six to eight years of driving before breaking even compared with an internal combustion car, so it is not worthy of being called protector of the environment, Mr. Stocklin said.

A System of Control

ESG is built on the“idea that experts should be coming up with the plan, and it is our job to follow,” Mr. Stocklin said, comparing this mindset with the one that caused the Great Famine in China, and the famines and unaffordability of food in Soviet Russia.

The most blatant example of private sector interfering with the public is the banks that froze the accounts of Canadian truckers when they were protesting for the COVID shots and mandates.

The private industry can thus control us in ways Western governments cannot, Mr. Stocklin said.

Companies can suppress society both through following laws but also by violating them, such as with collusion.

Collusion of companies to achieve business goals is not allowed by the law, but the net-zero asset-management alliance, the net-zero insurance alliance, and the similar climate clubs just do this, according to Mr. Stocklin, with the goal of pushing their companies in their portfolios to reduce fossil fuel usage.

But there was pushback to this. The House Oversight Committee and 23 state attorneys generals, for example, sent letters to the UN Net-Zero Insurance Alliance, saying, “What are you guys up to? We'd like to understand how this organization works,” Mr. Stocklin said. “Immediately, about half the insurance companies who were members quit the club. I find it very interesting that a simple letter that asks about what they are actually doing causes half the membership to just say, ‘Hey, we’re out.’”

Another way of violating the law to promote ESG ideology is the violation of civil rights. Civil rights prohibit discrimination on race, gender, or nationality.

Corporate quotas, however, discriminate based on race and nationality when they say that they have to fill a certain percentage of positions with a certain racial group, or gender group.

This behavior is recently under investigation by the U.S. Supreme Court and Harvard University, and action is expected according to Mr. Stocklin.

The ESG drama that we see playing out currently is a “clash of ideologies,” according to Mr. Stocklin.

There is a side believing that the purpose of government is to protect individual rights, and that companies should be responsible to their shareholders, meaning the people in society.

Then there is the progressive ideology who tries to have experts telling the public what to do, with examples being the ESG promotion and enforcement and the COVID measures.