ARTICLE AD BOX
"Social responsibility, the forerunner of ESG, was a popular way for executives to appear virtuous while spending their shareholder’s money ... [Milton] Friedman ... claim[ed] that there is only one social responsibility of business: 'to use its resources and engage in activities designed to increase its profits so long as it stays within the rules of the game, which is to say, engages in open and free competition without deception or fraud.'
"The Chicago University economist was campaigning against business leaders voluntarily engaging in acts of moral worthiness with other people’s resources, but today we face a more pernicious evil; state-mandated virtue. ...
"Section 7A of the Financial Markets Conduct Act 2013 ... obligates certain large firms, from AA Insurance to Z Energy to prepare climate statements and report on their greenhouse gas emissions.
"It is an absurdly onerous regime that achieves nothing. ...'[C]limate change reporting,' harrumphed [Warehouse chair Joan Withers] to the NBR, 'is taking up more director’s time than financial statements' ... [with] not one carbon molecule less ... emitted as a result of the thousands of pages these reports produce. ... a symptom of a wider malaise. ...
"New Zealand has become trapped in a malaise of wanting to be seen to do good at the expense of achieving anything."
~ Damien grant from his column 'Why climate change reporting is achieving nothing'
English (US) ·