41–50 of 189 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
They can be recycled once we have a large install base
Can they? I've seen people make this claim, but I've not seen it actually substantiated. Who has successfully recycled one, what was their yield, what was the cost?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
They can be recycled once we have a large install base
i.e. they can't be recycled now. We judge companies on their actions now , not on what they might do, or might be possible in the future.
Our startup takes a new data approach to transparency and granularity of ESG data to sidestep a lot of the criticisms of greenwashing, and help people understand. I don't think oversimplifying to one metric is an answer for all the people who care about other things (e.g. data privacy, corporate corruption, so many other issues). We have a little description of our approach at https://www.yourstake.org/info/noscore-e…
We at Evil Corp burned down half of the Amazon rain forest for a golf course, but we put a BLM banner on our website...so a B+?
ESG is a political compliance score. Fall out of favor with certain groups and your score will plummet, publicly tout an agenda around diversity and sustainability and your score will rise. The fact that Exxon (edit: oops I mean shell) has a higher ESG score than Tesla should be all you need to know.
(If that wasn't the case, it would be irrational for any company _not_ to be ESG compliant, right?)
But such an obvious arbitrage opportunity would hardly last long. So I suspect for every dollar someone shifts out of the general market into ESG only funds, someone else shifts a dollar in the opposite direction, creating no net effect except a wealth transfer from more ethically concerned to less ethically concerned investors.
See, extending the "Consumers will vote with their feet!" paradigm to the stock market is moronic. It just means "Be a sucker and give away your returns to anyone with less qualms." If a rule is worth wanting companies to follow, it needs to be made a law so it will apply equally to all competitors, else you get a classic race to the bottom.
ESG is a political compliance score. Fall out of favor with certain groups and your score will plummet, publicly tout an agenda around diversity and sustainability and your score will rise. The fact that Exxon (edit: oops I mean shell) has a higher ESG score than Tesla should be all you need to know.
> The fact that Exxon (edit: oops I mean shell) has a higher ESG score than Tesla should be all you need to know. If you weren't so deeply into Musk intimate parts and repeat word for word his tweet you'd realize that it makes perfect sense. Exxon only extracts the thing, it doesn't burn it. Tesla burns a lot of energy to build cars. That's not to say ESG is a perfect system, perfection would be assigning an ESG scor…
ESG supposed to provide a holistic measure of impact. Exxon and Tesla's ESG score would include the impact of using their product (ie burning Exxon's gas, driving and eventually disposing Tesla's cars)
Earlier quoted context omitted.
also Tesla is only average for the automotive industry which is mind-boggling.
A electric cars are mostly a luxury item for rich people to feel better. Not sure why you think Tesla should have a good rating. They are harmful in that they are actively distracting from the proper solution: that people shouldn't have private cars. The environmental cost to produce car, the space they take up in the cities, in the end private car ownership can not be made sustainable even if they run on electric. T…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
>That's not extortion, that's the opposite - bribery. I think that depends on your perspective. From the company's perspective, they're bribing the ratings agency by donating money. From the agency's perspective, they're using their rating as a way of coercing a company into making donations. That could be considered extortion, though not in the legal sense.
I think the distinction is -> if I threaten you by planting drugs on you, which I am not legally meant to do, then I am extrorting you as I took the initiative. If you are the one that was doing something illegal to begin with, and bribe an official to keep it under wraps, then it's on you.
I would question which direction the initiative is with respect to ESG ratings. If an ESG rating agency is publicly or privately showing exactly how certain factors are weighted, I would argue that the initiative is with the agency.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
also Tesla is only average for the automotive industry which is mind-boggling.
> To manufacture each EV battery, you must process > 25,000 pounds of brine for the lithium > 30,000 pounds of ore for the cobalt > 5,000 pounds of ore for the nickel, 25,000 pounds of ore for copper > Digging up 500,000 pounds of the earth's crust > For just - one - battery. https://twitter.com/brianroemmele/status/1503176565974216710 Would appreciate a fact check if this is anyone's business here
Petrol is fuel. You dig it up and burn it into the atmosphere again and again and again for every mile you drive.
> 2) The secondary market is a bad place to enact change. The intelligent defense of ESG is “by reducing the demand for a stock we can increase its cost of capital and impact its operating performance.” This is true to some degree, but I think this is dramatically overstated. For instance, the firms in the S&P 500 are all large established firms that have more than enough capital to finance their operations. They aren’t using the secondary equity markets to fund their operations. In fact, most firms have so much capital that they’ve been net buyers of stock in the last 50 years. So, this puts the cart before the horse. The better way to think of public companies is to think of them like horse betting. We can bet on the horses, but secondary market purchases are just private exchanges, not cash issuance to firms. As a result, betting on the horses doesn’t change the outcome of the race. Similarly, our secondary market purchases and sales have a far smaller impact on the firm’s operations than we might think.¹
* https://www.pragcap.com/my-view-on-esg-investing/
> Look, I completely understand. I want to invest my money, beat the market AND do what I feel like is right. But be really careful buying into the narrative about how ESG funds outperform. In most cases they aren’t being benchmarked properly and you’re just paying higher fees to chase performance that isn’t even as good as it’s advertised as.
* https://www.pragcap.com/sorry-but-your-esg-funds-probably-su...
A good interview I found on the topic:
> Alex’s book, “Grow the Pie: How Great Companies Deliver Both Purpose and Profit”, was featured in the Financial Times list of Business Books of the Year for 2020, and he is a co-author of “Principles of Corporate Finance” (with Brealey, Myers, and Allen) for the 14th edition to be published in April 2022. He was named Professor of the Year by Poets & Quants in 2021.
* https://rationalreminder.ca/podcast/192
It may be better to do non-ESG investing and use the "excess" returns to fund advocacy groups that will push for political change in the area that you wish. All the oil and coal barons are funding climate change denial messaging for example.
Further, if you're a stockholder of a "bad" company, you can vote for motions that the company to change its policies to become a "good" company. If you only own "good" companies, they're already doing the "right" thing. You want to 'reform' the ones doing the "wrong" thing.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
also Tesla is only average for the automotive industry which is mind-boggling.
A electric cars are mostly a luxury item for rich people to feel better. Not sure why you think Tesla should have a good rating. They are harmful in that they are actively distracting from the proper solution: that people shouldn't have private cars. The environmental cost to produce car, the space they take up in the cities, in the end private car ownership can not be made sustainable even if they run on electric. T…