I want to confess something kind of embarrassing, which is when I first read Larry Fink's letter,

I thought, oh, wow, you know, are the big money firms going to save us?

Do you think I was naive?

I think a lot of people found a glimmer of hope in Larry Fink's letter addressing climate risk.

I'm talking to Kelly Mitchell.

She runs an oil and gas watchdog group called Field Notes.

And that letter we're talking about was a big deal.

It was January 2020.

And Larry Fink, the co-founder and head of Black Rock, a big investment firm, put out his annual letter to corporate CEOs.

This morning and the world's largest asset manager announcing the firm will make climate change a focus of all of its investment strategy.

These letters always made a splash. BlackRock invests trillions of dollars globally on behalf of individuals saving for retirement or their kids' college, as well as corporations and governments.

So companies that want some of that money pay attention to what he says.

And for several years, Kelly says, Fink had been increasingly

raising the profile of so-called ESG issues.

ESG stands for environment, social, and governance. And at its heart, it's a series of tools

that companies and investors can use to analyze risk.

I know it sounds wonky, but the idea is simple that issues like climate change or labor

conditions or boardroom diversity can have a material impact on a company's bottom line.

That January 5 years ago, Fink's letter focused on the E in ESG

environment. He said climate change had become a defining factor in companies' long-term prospects

and that BlackRock would invest its clients' money and use its shareholder power to push for changes accordingly.

Here's how he described it on CNBC.

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