JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon said last week that many investors do not care about environmental, social, and governance investing, also known as ESG, despite his own bank’s significant efforts to advance the movement.
During an investor seminar in Washington that was closed to the press, Dimon made several provocative comments about present geopolitical realities and the present leadership of the United States, as confirmed by The New York Post. Among other assertions, he said that “investors don’t give a s***” about ESG and warned that corporate governance should not be “ceded” to “do-gooder kids on a committee.”
Companies that subscribe to the ESG movement might set quotas for racial diversity among executives, establish climate objectives, or otherwise blend leftist social movements with profitability. An exclusive poll from The Daily Wire showed that American investors would prefer that companies commit solely to the pursuit of profits, with 58% of respondents agreeing that companies leveraging their power for political or social ends is a “bad thing.”
JPMorgan Chase, however, has devoted more than $2.5 trillion over the course of the next decade to “advance long-term solutions that address climate change and contribute to sustainable development” in accordance with meeting worldwide emissions goals by 2050, according to its website, where Dimon is quoted as saying, “climate change and inequality are two of the critical issues of our time.”
Dimon, considered one of the most influential executives on Wall Street, appears to have changed his tune in recent months. He said at the seminar that the “President of the United States needs to stand up and say we may not meet our 2050 climate objectives because this is a f***ing war,” adding that officials must recognize it is “time to stop going hat in hand to Venezuela and Saudi and start pumping more oil and gas in the USA.”
When President Joe Biden visited Saudi Arabia three months ago, many had speculated that encouraging higher energy output in response to elevated gas prices in the United States was a primary factor. That suspicion appeared to be validated after the Saudi government released a statement last week revealing the commander-in-chief’s request to delay the production cut until after the midterm elections. Earlier this month, Biden reportedly began preparing to ease sanctions on Venezuela so that Chevron, an American oil company, could resume production in the socialist nation.
The Biden administration has meanwhile garnered criticism for nixing expansions to the Keystone XL pipeline and slowing federal oil leases to a crawl. During a recent interview with CNBC, Dimon remarked that despite climate hawks’ desire to reduce output in the interest of lower emissions, developing nations such as India, China, and the Philippines revert to coal power when oil and natural gas prices begin to rise, resulting in more emissions.
“I think we’re getting energy completely wrong, which is, you know, ever since this war started, you know that Europe is going to have a problem,” he explained. “And that it was pretty predictable that Putin was going to cut off some gas and some oil, and oil prices would go up.”
The national average price for gasoline is presently $3.89 per gallon, according to data from AAA, marking a nearly 63% increase since Biden assumed office at the beginning of last year.