BlackRock CEO scales back emphasis on climate investing

BlackRock (Video screenshot)

John Hugh DeMastri
Daily Caller News Foundation

CEO Larry Fink of investing titan BlackRock put reduced emphasis on climate and other environmental, social and governance (ESG) goals in an annual letter to the company’s investors and stakeholders Wednesday, amid Republican criticism of his firm’s investing strategy.

WND is now on Trump's Truth Social! Follow us @WNDNews

BlackRock has faced significant criticism from Republicans, who allege that the company has focused too much on “woke” investing to the detriment of its clients, and more recently Democrats who argue the company hasn’t gone far enough with its ESG efforts. Fink’s reduced emphasis on his firm’s role in the energy transition stands in stark contrast to his 2020 letter to investors, in which he argued the company had a “significant responsibility … to play a constructive role” in the transition to low-carbon sources of energy, Axios reported.

“At BlackRock we use data and analytics to help our clients understand how the energy transition is evolving and give them choices about how they would like to invest in emerging opportunities. Better data is essential,” Fink said in the letter. “But as I have said consistently over many years now, it is for governments to make policy and enact legislation, and not for companies, including asset managers, to be the environmental police.”

While Fink did not respond directly to the firm’s critics, he emphasized the BlackRock’s “fiduciary duty” to clients, which he said included an understanding that “climate risk is an investment risk.” Fink echoed the company’s previous messaging that it would not alter its investment strategy due to political pressure.

“There are many people with opinions about how we should manage our clients’ money,” said Fink. “But the money doesn’t belong to these people. It’s not ours either. It belongs to our clients, and our responsibility and our duty is to them.”

Should BlackRock move away from climate investing?

BlackRock managed $8.6 trillion as of Dec. 31, according to Reuters.

This story originally was published by the Daily Caller News Foundation.

Content created by The Daily Caller News Foundation is available without charge to any eligible news publisher that can provide a large audience. For licensing opportunities of our original content, please contact [email protected].

EDITOR’S NOTE: Long the world’s most Christian nation, America today is being taken over by a new “official” national religion, one being imposed on the entire populace by every major societal institution, from government, media and big tech, to academia, entertainment and business.

This new state religion is Wokeism. “Going woke” conjures up visions of someone claiming to be acutely sensitive (“awake”) to “systemic social and political injustice.” And not just alleged bigotry against blacks, but toward every other “minority” as well, from LGBT folk – especially everything transgender and “nonbinary” – to “undocumented immigrants.” All of them, being VICTIMS, intrinsically more virtuous than the shameful oppressor class: primarily heterosexual white males.

This new “woke” consciousness has turned America upside-down – from the nationwide Antifa and Black Lives Matter riots in 2020, to tearing down of historic monuments, to demanding multi-million-dollar reparation payments for blacks, to appointing transgenders as top government officials, to rampant reverse discrimination in every area of life, to the U.S. military imposing mandatory “diversity training” and transgender pronoun use on all personnel, causing recruitment to disastrously plummet.

Yet there is hope. Being “saved” – which in Wokeism is called being “woke” – is largely a matter of worshipping victimhood by becoming an “ally” and “defender” of all the many victim classes, and a determined enemy of the straight white male oppressor class. Thus, “joining the righteous” as an ally – even if one is cursed to be a straight white male – opens the door mercifully for salvation, even to the most wretched.

That is the power of the religion of Wokeism. And it’s explored as never before in the February 2023 issue of WND’s critically acclaimed monthly Whistleblower magazine. If you’ve ever wondered, for example, exactly how the most radical elements in American society are successfully pressuring the biggest corporations into adopting the most outrageous and immoral policies imaginable, even when doing so permanently damages and devalues the company, the stunning answers are in this issue of Whistleblower, titled “WOKEISM: AMERICA’S OFFICIAL STATE RELIGION.”

SUPPORT TRUTHFUL JOURNALISM. MAKE A DONATION TO THE NONPROFIT WND NEWS CENTER. THANK YOU!