The ABC, CBS and NBC evening news networks chose to whitewash news that the world’s second largest investment firm left a woke “climate alliance” of elitist money managers.
Financial Times reported Dec. 7, that Vanguard Group departed from the Net Zero Asset Managers (NZAM) initiative, “the main financial alliance on tackling climate change.” The Times said that Vanguard cited “investor ‘confusion’ amid increase in criticism from Republicans” as the reason behind the defection.
In November, 13 Republican attorneys general led by Utah Attorney General Sean Reyes “filed a rare motion” asking the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) “to prevent” Vanguard from “purchasing shares of publicly listed utility companies due to its particular obsession with environmental, social and governance (ESG) investing. NZAM members reportedly committed to “achieving net zero carbon emissions by 2050.”
But NBC Nightly News, ABC World News Tonight and CBS Evening News ignored the story during their Dec. 7, Dec. 8 and Dec. 9 evening broadcasts. Vanguard allegedly saw that “the alliance’s full-throated commitment to fighting climate change had resulted ‘in confusion about the views of individual investment firms.’”
Leftists wield ESG standards to coerce companies to change corporate policies and align to a more woke ideological structure on issues such as climate change and gender. Vanguard leaving the NZAM is a clear win for conservatives, so it’s no wonder why the liberal talking heads at the Big Three networks treated the story as if it didn’t even exist.
The GOP attorneys general said in their filing with FERC that “‘Vanguard’s own public commitments and other statements have at the very least created the appearance that Vanguard has breached its promises to the Commission by engaging in environmental activism and using its financial influence to manipulate the activities of the utility companies in its portfolio.’”
It looks as if Vanguard is now trying to backpedal its climate nuttiness. NZAM, which reportedly houses “291 members managing $66tn in assets as of November,” includes other major ESG-obsessed asset managers like BlackRock, State Street and JPMorgan Asset Management.
ESG opponent and Strive Asset Management co-founder Vivek Ramaswamy emphasized the threat of ESGs that Vanguard championed:
If you’re an everyday citizen, you might be at risk of losing your job or putting food on the dinner table if you don’t bend the knee to that new orthodoxy. That’s where you get to this place where we can’t even talk about these issues in the open because you have an economic sword that’s ultimately hanging over your head if you defect from the main orthodoxy.
See MRC Business’s explainer on how ESGs present a major threat to America’s culture, business and overall economy.
The net-zero climate virtue signaling by leftists in government, media and corporate America is a complete farce, according to Hoover Institution visiting fellow Bjorn Lomborg.
“The world is waking up to the fact that the climate policy goal of achieving ‘net-zero’ CO2 emissions brings crippling economic pain,” Lomborg wrote in an Oct. 6 op-ed in Canada’s National Post. “Fossil fuel prices shot up by 26 per cent across industrialized economies last year and will rise globally by another 50 per cent this year. Politicians blame Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, but the long-term trend stems mostly from governments demonizing fossil fuels while their societies remain dependent on them.”
NewsBusters Analyst Kevin Tober contributed to this report.
Conservatives are under attack. Contact ABC News (818) 460-7477, CBS News (212) 975-3247 and NBC News (212) 664-6192 and demand they report on Vanguard leaving the net-zero climate alliance in a win for the movement against ESGs.
