The American right wing’s widening fight against what it calls “woke capitalism” is partly driven by fossil fuel interests or industry allies, according to a new report published on Thursday.
Conservatives often use the term “woke capitalism” to refer to environmental, social and corporate governance – or ESG – criteria used to screen investments based on their environmental and social implications.
Just this year, Republican lawmakers in 37 states introduced a stunning 165 pieces of anti-ESG legislation, according to the new report from the strategic research and advisory firm Pleiades Strategy.
“The trend has been rampant,” said Connor Gibson, who co-authored the report.
The 165 proposals sought to employ a variety of tactics, ranging from imposing limits on public contracts and restricting pension managers to forcing disclosures and combatting federal investment rules.
The researchers examined news articles, fiscal notes and statehouse testimony related to each bill. They found that the majority of them bear strong resemblances to model bills crafted or circulated by four influential rightwing thinktanks: the American Legislative Exchange Council, the Heritage Foundation, the Heartland Institute and the Foundation for Government Accountability.
Each of the four organizations is affiliated with the far-right thinktank coalition State Policy Network, whose members have also fought to pass punitive anti-pipeline protest laws and which has received funding from groups linked to fossil fuel billionaires Charles and the late David Koch.
Advocacy for many of the bills was also led by fossil fuel-tied groups, including the Texas Public Policy Foundation (TPPF), which has accepted at least $8.8m from organizations linked to the Kochs since 2012, and has also received funding from ExxonMobil, ConocoPhillips and Chevron. The TPPF began attacking ESG as far back as 2020 and says it was behind a pioneering anti-ESG bill passed in Texas in 2021.
The American Petroleum Institute, the nation’s largest oil and gas lobbying organization, has also worked to shape anti-ESG policies. And representatives from several other fossil fuel interest groups have supported the efforts as well, the researchers say.
Despite their well-connected champions, just 22 of the 165 proposed anti-ESG bills progressed through statehouses, the report says.
“The dark-money-funded attacks on the freedom to invest responsibly hit deep opposition from business, labor and environmental advocates in statehouses across the country this year,” said Frances Sawyer, founder of Pleiades Strategy and co-author of the report. “Our report shows that the effort to weaponize government funds, contracts and pensions to prevent companies and investors from considering real financial risks is not a winning platform.”
Many of the bills that did pass were watered down before they became law, the report says. But that doesn’t mean they won’t have real negative consequences.
Opponents of the successful pieces of legislation fear they could cost taxpayers millions, collectively. And the implications for climate policy could be even larger, because the legislation could have a chilling effect on future climate policy.
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The laws could create an environment that discourages support for shareholder resolutions that aim to lower emissions, said Sawyer. It could also make it harder for states to take advantage of the clean energy investments offered by the Inflation Reduction Act, she said, due to fears that those funds would drive competition with the industries the bills favor.
“The full extent of those costs, we don’t know,” she said.
Anti-ESG legislation has increasingly popped up in statehouses over the past two years. In 2021, North Dakota lawmakers passed a law calling for a study of the implications of state funds making investments “for the purpose of obtaining an effect other than a maximized return to the state”.
The same year, Texas lawmakers passed a law prohibiting state funds from contracting with or investing in companies that “boycott” fossil fuel stocks, based on a policy passed four years earlier that aimed to prevent Texas from doing business with entities that support the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions, or BDS, movement, for Palestine.
Similar legislation began to appear in statehouses across the country. Last year, Idaho, New Hampshire, Tennessee, Oklahoma and Kentucky all passed various forms of anti-ESG legislation.
The legislation is unpopular, the authors say, but they still expect to see more of it in the coming years as more policymakers take the energy transition more seriously.
“We think this is the latest iteration of climate denial and obstruction and delay,” said Gibson.