ESG (Environmental, Social, Governance) Investing

Can ESG investing save the planet and humanity from itself and each other?

Two examples tell me they can't:

1) Beyond Meat: Beyond Meat shot up in value after it's IPO, and you would think that would mean it will have all the operating capital it needs to expand and grow to produce maximum meat-replacement products and thus save the world from the environmental harm of meat.

Stocks go up and down based on speculation, however, so investors can use the Beyond Meat stock to grow their money, which they will then pull out of the inflated stock and use for other things, such as steak dinners and McDonalds stock. Just because investors can make money on veganism doesn't mean they aren't supporting meat industries by doing so.

2) Uber: Ride sharing can reduce the number of cars on the road, fuel burnt, pavement laid, and stimulate sprawl-reduction and reforestion, right? Maybe, depending on how people share rides and how local governments plan infrastructure and development.

But as far as stock investing goes, why would Uber be different than any other stock in terms of funneling money to people who will spend it on traditional single-occupant driving? Yes, Uber or any other company needs operating capital to pay for rides, share-scooters, share-bikes, etc. etc.; but nothing is preventing companies from milking its supply-chain to pay all their people to drive their own cars. Can you get a well-paying job making/selling scooters/bicycles and then spend the money on a car and pay other people in other businesses to drive their own cars as well? Sure you can, so it takes more than investing in Uber to reduce the number of cars on the roads.

So if ESG investing can't save the world, what is it good for? Well, it's better than investing in companies that eschew and discriminate against 'weirdo' culture like veganism and alternative transportation for sustainable climate.

What would work better, however, would be to boycott companies who shirk and/or fail at ethical behavior in various ways, but that would require preventing investors from buying up those stocks when they are falling due to divestment, and as long as their price-earnings ratio is going down due to prospective sales and revenues keeping up despite divestment by ethical investors, the temptation will be there for less-ethical investors to buy up those stocks and make the money that the ethical are eschewing.

So real change comes from either consumers boycotting unethical products/companies and/or rules/laws that prevent unethical products/activities from taking place at all.

Unfortunately, as long as unethical business has the money to pay government to obstruct such rules/laws, they will. What's more, they will whitewash/greenwash other laws/rules/policies that actually do harm and/or avert good.

For example, a Democrat senator recently proposed a cash4clunkers program to buy up old cars and subsidize their replacement with electric cars. Electric cars may be better than those driven by combustion, but pavement, lanes, and sprawl are not going to go down if the same number of cars stays on the roads, only they're electric.

So how do you invest in less cars, less pavement, and less sprawl; which ultimately cost less and generate less revenues and growth than everyone driving?
1) save money instead of investing it. Less growth means more people will make less money and thus need to use transit because they can't afford to drive their own vehicle.
2) invest in innovations that make transit better - only you can't really do this because the moment traditional companies see that there is money to be made in such innovations, they try to take over and control those markets. This has clearly happened with the autonomous-vehicle market, where all the big automotive players have now gotten involved and effectively slowed progress down to a trickle - while cashing in as much as possible on anyone willing to invest in moving progress forward.

Sorry for so much bad news in ethical investing, but money stimulates maintenance of the status quo for a reason; and its mostly because as long as there's more money to make by averting change than embracing it, it makes financial sense to invest money in blocking or thwarting such change.

So maybe these ESG investors are actually funding the very crusade against ethical change that will make them the most money by scuttling their interest in funding positive/ethical change.

https://www.npr.org/2019/10/26/771323268/as-investors-try-to-be-more-ethical-some-find-no-escape-from-businesses-they-det