Post-Ian, Look For DeSantis To (Briefly) Shut His Anti-Earth Pie-Hole About "Woke Capital"
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"DeSantis acts like a maverick, but his war on 'woke' capitalism is plain old crony capitalism," Kathleen Brophy, the climate finance senior strategist at the Sunrise Project, told Salon. DeSantis and other Republican governors are "weaponizing the power of the state to force the market to favor the very companies causing the climate crisis." How this all works is more than a bit wonky — bear with me. The world of corporate investment has created this concept called "environmental, social and governance" (ESG) guidelines. On the climate front, that means moving money away from fossil fuel companies and into the green technologies Biden's bill is helping beef up. That, in turn, threatens the oil and gas industries to which Republican politicians are so beholden. So red-state governments are punishing investment firms that divest from dirty energy to go green.
On the same day that Senate Democrats announced the Inflation Reduction Act, DeSantis signed an executive order barring Florida's pension funds from using ESG guidelines in their investment decisions. It's an effort to lock $240 billion of investments into oil and gas, and keep the money away from the green investment that the Biden bill is likely to make far more lucrative. Other red states have even gone so far as to ban their governments from doing business with firms — including many major banks — that use ESG ratings in their investment decisions.
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The main takeaway is this: Oil and gas companies are having a harder and harder time competing with green energy for investment capital, so they want DeSantis and their other loyal Republican clients to rig the game in their favor. In doing so, Brophy argued, Republicans are piling "economic suffering on top of the human and social toll that catastrophes like Ian bring," by putting "the life savings of Florida pensioners and retirees at immediate risk, and obstructing the economic transition necessary if we are to have any hope of remaining resilient in the face of climate change."
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This past year has offered numerous ugly reminders of both the economic and environmental danger of relying on fossil fuels. Russia's war on Ukraine sent gas prices to dizzying heights, fueling an inflation crisis. Disasters like Hurricane Ian and the floods in Kentucky make abundantly clear that climate change isn't just a threat to human life, homes and communities, but a major economic disaster. Despite all the hyperbolic accusations of "Marxism" flung by the right, the banal reality is that Biden's climate change bill is as much about saving capitalism as it is saving the climate. Oil companies have made record profits while the world's economy is in a tailspin. Hurricane Ian will depart from Florida on Thursday leaving a path of devastation in its wake, and Ron DeSantis will go right back to doing what he did before: Protecting the profits of fossil-fuel company that are literally destroying the planet, while ignoring the economic and human disaster caused by his bogus anti-"woke" crusade.
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https://www.salon.com/2022/09/29/as-hurricane-ian-ravages-florida-dont-forget-ron-desantis-leads-the-on-green-energy/
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Imagine if another hurricane nails the state before the season ends. He appears to be setting out onto the tightrope now...
