On Friday, House Judiciary Chairman Jim Jordan (R-Ohio), along with fellow committee member Dan Bishop (R-N.C.), sent a letter to the CEO of Ceres, a climate “sustainability organization,” which appears to accuse the organization of holding back documents that the committee needs to investigate alleged collusion between Ceres (through a group known as “Climate Action 100+, which looks to make businesses take actions on so-called climate change) and American financial companies.
The letter accuses Ceres of acting “like a cartel” to ensure that companies are following environment, social, and governance (ESG)-approved business models, and the Judiciary Committee is looking into whether that alleged collusion may be running afoul of U.S. antitrust laws.
“We are writing to you because of your roles coordinating how some companies pursue environmental, social, and governance (ESG) policies in ways that may violate antitrust laws. Each of you is on the Steering Committee for Climate Action 100+, which seems to work like a cartel to ‘ensure the world’s largest corporate greenhouse gas emitters take necessary action on climate change,’” said the letter, obtained by the Daily Caller.
“In short, you and your organizations appear to play major roles in efforts to advance ESG policies. We therefore write to request information about related conduct or agreements that may be unlawful under U.S. antitrust laws.”
In December, six members of the Judiciary Committee sent a letter to Ceres CEO Mindy Lubber and Simiso Nzima, a managing director of CalPERS, the California Public Employees’ Retirement System, which is heavily invested in the Climate Action 100+ group. That letter asked for documents and communications in which either Ceres or Climate Action 100+ advanced ESG- or climate-related goals.
The December 6 letter made no bones about what the signatories thought about ESG investing:
At its core, ESG is merely partisan politics masquerading as responsible corporate governance. A major ESG “policy centerpiece” is stifling investments in oil and gas, and Wall Street firms have “brag[ged] about their coordinated efforts to choke off investment in energy.” Boycotting certain energy investment, however, is just a subset of the types of ESG-related goals.
While Ceres has submitted some documentation on the issue, Jordan and Bishop apparently believe there is much more that Ceres is not sharing with the committee.
“Although Ceres has been producing some material on a rolling basis, its response to date has been inadequate. More than five months after our initial requests, Ceres has produced just 161 documents,” the May 5 letter states. “In addition, Ceres’s production includes a number of duplicative documents, many documents that are publicly available, and several documents with excessive redactions.”
The committee would still like to review all of the documentation and communications requested in the original December 6 letter. According to the new letter, Ceres has until May 19 to comply with the Judiciary Committee’s request. If Ceres does not comply, Jordan and Bishop hinted, a subpoena might be coming their way:
We reiterate these requests and ask for your prompt voluntarily [sic] compliance by May 19, 2023. Please be advised that the Committee may be forced to resort to compulsory process if these requests remain outstanding.
ESG, as it’s being pushed by the Biden administration and other assorted globalists, bears a striking resemblance to China’s social credit system — a system in which the government judges behavior and doles out rewards and punishment based on a citizen’s compliance.
“If the ESG picture is starting to look a lot like Communist China’s Social Credit System, it’s not an accident. As we have been reporting here for decades, BlackRock, Goldman Sachs, Chase, Citi, and other Wall Street titans have been financing the mass-murdering regime to the tune of hundreds of billions of dollars. These ‘capitalist’ banksters appear to be perfectly at home with China’s communist banksters as fellow members of UNPRI [United Nations Principles for Responsible Investment],” William Jasper wrote in the April 24 edition of The New American.
ESG is clearly fine with many American banks, Joe Biden, and most Democrats in Congress. However, standing in its way is the GOP-controlled House of Representatives and dozens of individual states who have taken a firm stand against ESG and its unabashed globalist intentions.
