Companies with good ESG scores pollute as much as low-rated rivals

Re:Companies with good ESG scores pollute as much as low-rat... by distant_hat on Wednesday August 02, 2023 @03:48PM (#36976260)

Often companies with good ESG scores optimize for having good scores. Its like studying to the test and they may have particularly poor results outside of the test that they have studied for. Also, ESG is political and like all things that involve politics, many things that may be good for the score may be bad for the environment. Easiest example to see is in energy with things like nuclear power, and 'biomass' and coal.

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Re:Companies with good ESG scores pollute as much as low-rat... by water9 on Wednesday August 02, 2023 @03:59PM (#36976441)

Nuclear power if done safely is a much better alternative than say windmills which require extensive mining to make and kill thousands of birds a year.

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Re:Companies with good ESG scores pollute as much as low-rat... by maigret on Wednesday August 02, 2023 @04:52PM (#36977232)

You’ll hate cats then https://www.statista.com/chart/15195/wind-turbines-are-not-k...

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Re:Companies with good ESG scores pollute as much as low-rat... by genericone on Wednesday August 02, 2023 @05:33PM (#36977900)

You'll hate statistics even more: https://www.npr.org/sections/13.7/2013/02/03/170851048/do-we...

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Re:Companies with good ESG scores pollute as much as low-rat... by magicalist on Wednesday August 02, 2023 @06:00PM (#36978279)

That's not statistics, though? That's "we think there are fewer ownerless cats in the world than the authors do".

> We don't quarrel with the conclusion that the impact is big, but the numbers are informed guesswork.

Meanwhile the author outright says they're writing this opinion piece because they don't want to see cats banned as pets or people going out and killing a bunch of cats.

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Re:Companies with good ESG scores pollute as much as low-rat... by polski-g on Friday August 04, 2023 @07:30AM (#36998473)

Cats kill 2.4b birds a year? Buildings kill 600m? These numbers are completely unbelievable. Were the made up in a left-wing think tank staffed entirely by birds?

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Re:Companies with good ESG scores pollute as much as low-rat... by brickteacup on Wednesday August 02, 2023 @05:13PM (#36977579)

something something when a metric becomes a target it ceases to be a good metric

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Re:Companies with good ESG scores pollute as much as low-rat... by robocat on Wednesday August 02, 2023 @05:33PM (#36977899)

A good description would be “over-fitting”.

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Re:Companies with good ESG scores pollute as much as low-rat... by nomel on Wednesday August 02, 2023 @05:43PM (#36978046)

I'm not sure that fits, since it might imply it's not intentional.

I think these companies are simply, explicitly, optimizing directly for ESG, for maximum gain, without regards to the "spirit" of ESG. They're rational actors. Why wouldn't they? Just like with taxes, it would be silly to not use the loopholes.

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Re:Companies with good ESG scores pollute as much as low-rat... by barfingclouds on Thursday August 03, 2023 @06:17PM (#36992816)

Nuclear energy is clean energy

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