The Death of ESG

Marketplace All-in-One

Marketplace

News, Business

4.8 • 1.3K Ratings

🗓️ 16 April 2025

⏱️ 33 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

In recent years, ESG investing moved from a mainstream strategy promoted by the biggest asset managers in the world, to a polarizing topic. Financial firms scrubbed the acronym from their websites, dropped out of net-zero initiatives, and stopped advertising their climate efforts. Some have proclaimed ESG dead and buried. But if so, who killed it and why?

In this episode – our ESG whodunit – we take out our magnifying glasses to take a closer look at the legislation that would spark dozens of other bills across the country. We’ll question a line-up of suspects at the center of the anti-ESG plot, and dive into their motivations for protecting the fossil fuel industry.

Transcript

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0:00.0	So how would you describe the smell?
0:04.0	It is, we haven't even gotten to the worst of it.
0:08.0	I'm on the bow of the Sam Houston, an elegant 95-foot boat.
0:14.0	With the breeze in my hair and the state flag of Texas flapping overhead,
0:20.0	it's got the vibe of a pleasure cruise, if it weren't for the smell.
0:24.7	Oh, yeah, now it's really pungent.
0:27.2	My colleague Elizabeth Troval, who covers energy for Marketplace,
0:31.3	invited me on this boat tour, a ride along the Houston Ship Channel,
0:35.6	the industrial waterway that connects the port of Houston
0:38.3	to the Gulf of Mexico.
0:40.6	As we leave the Turner Basin off to the left, you will see public grain elevator, number one.
0:46.5	Chugging along, we see big metal grain elevators and giant cargo ships from far away countries,
0:53.4	which Elizabeth looks up on her phone.
0:55.9	Her length overall is 179.98 meters,
0:59.4	and her width is 32 meters.
1:02.0	She's a hefty lass.
1:04.1	Until we reach the source of that smell,
1:06.8	the oil refineries.
1:08.8	There's a bunch of white cylinders jetting up in the ground,
1:12.8	and then like hundreds of much smaller tubes.
1:17.0	I can see flames or flaring coming out of some of those tubes,
1:21.9	and what looks like steam churning out of smokestacks.
	...

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