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Corporate Social Responsibility Why current environmental, social, and governance (ESG) ratings might be meaningless "Had it not been for the rise of the pandemic’s second wave or the post-election mayhem, Phillip Morris’ addition to a club of companies that are supposed to be doing well on environmental, social, and governance (ESG) factors might have gotten a bit more attention. After all, the company sells 700 billion cigarettes a year. How could it have joined the Dow Jones Sustainability Index (DJSI) North America, one of hundreds of recently created market indexes that track firms purporting to rate well on product safety, greenhouse gas emissions, board diversity, and other ESG factors? "The reason is simple. The bar for what constitutes a good corporate citizen is abysmally low and may have made ESG investing, arguably the hottest trend in investing today, a greater force for destabilizing society and the planet than if it didn’t exist at all." |