ESG Goes to War

 https://amgreatness.com/2022/03/14/esg-goes-to-war/

Morals or WOKE?

ESG Goes to War

Support for the modish “environmental, social, and governance” movement is mainly empty sloganeering—as multinational corporations have shown with their response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. 

By Richard J. Shinder

March 14, 2022

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has given rise to an exodus of Western-based multinational firms from the Russian market. Emblematic of this was BP (formerly British Petroleum), the British energy firm, deciding in the days after Vladimir Putin’s forces entered Ukraine to sell its 20 percent stake in Rosneft, Russia’s state-controlled energy company. Since then, a number of other large companies have elected to suspend or exit their operations in Russia, and the Wall Street Journal and other publications have tracked the growing number of Western businesses pulling out from the Russian market, a list spanning myriad industries and headquarters countries that includes Apple, Boeing, Ford, Volkswagen, American Express, H&M, FedEx, and Google.

It may be that these companies are leaving theRussian market entirely for morally commendable reasons in the face of Putin’s naked aggression and violation of Ukraine’s sovereignty. But it raises another question: why now?