Why ESG is Sinister

In contemporary finance, a bank’s “head of responsible investing” is meant to be an apostle of woke capitalism: a very modern kind of money man who tours the world touting all the good their employer is doing. So you might have expected a speech on climate change and finance by Stuart Kirk, the man with that job title at HSBC Asset Management, to be a bromide-filled snoozefest about the win-win nature of the transition to the green economy.

But Mr. Kirk’s address at a recent conference on “Moral Money” was nothing of the sort. Instead, he delivered a broadside against the fashionable idea that climate change is a risk that no financial institution can afford to ignore. “Twenty-five years in the finance industry, there’s always some nutjob telling me about the end of the world,” he said, arguing that the impact of climate change would be “de minimis,” given mankind’s talent for adaptation.

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