Latest / Financial Survival Network / ESG Going the Way of the Buggy Whip -- Steve Goreham #6010

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ESG Going the Way of the Buggy Whip -- Steve Goreham #6010 · Financial Survival Network

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And a big part of the issue is, as you say, Environmental,
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Social and Governance ESG, which was really a drive to get rid of coal,
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oil and natural gas. See, the environmental was kind of a big
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e on that. But we've had a bunch of states that have said,
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hey, wait a minute, you're listening to Carrie Lutz's Financial Survival Network,
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trying times. You need the Financial Survival Network now more than ever. Go
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Network now more than ever. And welcome you are and listening to and watching
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the Financial Survival Network. I'm your host, Carrie Lutz. Well ESG is
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turning out to not be good business for business. Who would have ever thought
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that could be possible? Certainly not yours truly, But my next guest knew
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it all along, Steve Gorm. It's great to have you back. If
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you've got a question for Steve myself, bet ESG or anything else, shoot
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me an email kl at Kerrie Lutz dot com. Steve, great to have
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you back. So what's going on here with this ESG stuff. It looks
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like the big investment banks finding out this is not a profit boom. The
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only company making money off of this is Tesla because they're selling their regulatory AX
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credits and we'll see how much that gravy train lasts for right, they have
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to a big tex credits sessilat. Yeah. So we've had the Black Brock
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and Vanguard, JP Morgan, Pimcole other Wall Street firms that are pulling back
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from the climate change pledges. Several of them withdrew from a group called Climate
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Action one hundred in just this last month. And a big part of the
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issue is, as you say, Environmental, Social and Governance ESG, which
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was really a drive to get rid of coal, oil and natural gas.
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See the environmental was kind of a big e on that. But we've had
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a bunch of states that have said, hey, wait a minute, Texas,
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West, Virginia, Florida. I've all said things like, well,
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we're not going to use any of our pension funds on your funds, our
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pension money if you keep pushing the CESG thing. So they pull back from
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that. And then the other thing that has happened is that the renewable energy
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stocks are in kind of a tail spin. There's an index called the Renix
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Index r e NIXX, which is a list of ropefully the top thirty renewable
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energy companies in the world. It's a stock fund index, been around about
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twenty five thirty years. Well, that has been dropping. It's doun about
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fifty percent in the last three years, the Renics index. And so we
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have many of these renewable companies that are just not doing well. And so
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I think the big financial firms are going, you know, we're kind of
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advising that they pursue these renewables and it's not working very well. Gee,
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hey, you know, I learned a long time ago that the only purpose
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of business is to make money, all right, do it legally, ethically
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and all that good stuff. Now, and when they start with all this
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do gooder stuff and woke stuff and equality and equity and all that, that's
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when their problems invariably begin. And why have they not figured this out yet?
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Steve Well, I think this tremendous public pressure. And we have people
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like Google and Apple and Amazon all talking about how green they are and how
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they're getting to green electricity for their data centers. A lot of other things.
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Those things cost money, though they end up purchasing electricity at a higher
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rate, which impacts their stockholders and shareholders. But it is it is in
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big park to build their green image with the public. And as long as
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the public green thinks that green companies are adding something or doing something, they're
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going to continue to do this, all right. So you know, we've
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got places like Exxon where these folks have gotten in place on the board.
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They're trying to get them to do all this stuff that they don't want to
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do. And is that going to change too, do you think? Well,
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the oil companies are under tremendous pressure. It's not only on the board,
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but many of them are being sued personally liat The suits are trying to
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make the board members personally liable for their position on that human caused climate change
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is not a problem where their past positions. So many of the oil companies
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have caved into this. The American Petroleum Institute thanks you out of a carbon
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tax. It's really really very sad. Our world runs on hydrocarbon energy,
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coal, oil and natural gas, and everything from our clothes to our smartphones
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to the vehicles we use. Not only how they're manufactured, but how they
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drive, to the endless rows of plastic bottles in our supermarkets, to our
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medicines, which come from hydrocarbons. Our medical supplies come from hydrocarbons at all.
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About half the world use a synthetic fertilizer for our food, and much
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of the world uses tractors using diesel as well. So our world runs on
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this stuff and we're not going to be able to switch from it quickly.
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Net zero is just not going to happen. Okay, So, but you
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know, these plastic bottles and all this extra waste that we have, like
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fast food place, I mean, shouldn't we really be looking to get rid
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of that and minimize it. But we do have a problem with plastic waste
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in the oceans. It is often overstated, but there's about one hundred million
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tons of plastic it's estimated in the oceans, and we're adding about ten million
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tons a year. Almost none of that comes from the United States or Europe.
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It's mostly from developing nations far east. That sort of thing. So
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banning straws in San Francisco isn't going to have a real big effects. But
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we do need biodegradable plastics. But that is a real problem to solve,
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unlike the problem of trying to reduce carbon dioxide emissions to stop global warming.
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That is a not a problem and be probably not possible, all right,
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So yeah, I mean I see it like these is the water bottles.
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It's like, there's really not a br ar kit to recycle plastic, right,
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I mean, no, there isn't a lot of it goes in the
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landfills. I'm a tap water guy, I'm not don't give me this bottle
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full of water. And the people who are complaining are the ones drinking the
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bottled water, the periet and the the van and all that good stuff.
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Yeah, but seriously, so should we be switching back to glass, Well,
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I don't think so. Really. I think that the key is biodegradable
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plastics. Things that break out in sunlight. You know, they might have
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a problem where you can't leave a jug of milk out in the sun.
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That wouldn't work too well. But but I think that's what we need.
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Those are more expensive, though, but the industry is working at it.
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There's some other big problems though, too. One is discharge of wastewater.
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About eighty percent of the world's wastewater is discharged untreated into rivers, lakes,
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and streams. Seven years or so ago, the Olympic swimmers in Brazil didn't
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want to swim in the water down there. Brazil's just building their first water
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treatment plants. That's that again, is a real problem to solve, not
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a big problem with the US and Europe as well, in wealthy nations.
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Let's solve that and U pouring all this money to try and reduce carbon oxide
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emissions. Okay, so yeah, well I see it all over the world.
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You know, I was doing some research because I was in Asia recently
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in Yeah Island, and you know, most of the world does not have
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a tapwater that is drinkable audible, right, you know, much of the
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world. To learn out about about two billion of the eight billion people do
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not have real good water. I think, I think the numbers about six
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or seven hundred that don't have access to clean jab water. But in other
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cases it's not real good. Yeah. Well, for instance, in North
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America or in the Americas, I think there's four countries where you can drink
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the tap water, not including the islands in the Caribbean that is Canada,
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the US. I think Chile and got it. The other country eludes make
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In Asia? Maybe what's that that? Maybe? Yeah? In Asia,
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there's only five countries where you can drink the tap water Japan, South Korea,
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Singapore, and I don't remember the other countries. But most of most
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of the other places you've got to treat the water. They have filters.
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Like my friends in Thailand, they have a reverse osmosis water filter in their
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condo so they can drink the water. But you know, we shouldn't we
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be thinking about drinking water tap water, making that pure. Wouldn't that make
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a bigger difference than anything else. These those are people are trying to do.
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Those are real problems to solve, and we certainly need to do that.
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Definitely the case. So rather than again the carbon diox I think,
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did you hear what missus former Secretary of State and presidential candidate Hillary Clinton has
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called for. You haven't been as followed up. She called for us to
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track start tracking climate deaths. Oh, if you remember, during COVID nineteen,
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we had a daily indicator. You could go online and find everyone who
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had a COVID case or a death in a state and iron countries. Well,
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she wants to start tracking climate deaths on a daily basis and support a
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policeason insane. Hey, so go back to the tap water four cokay,
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four countries in the Americas, Canada, US, Costa Rica, and Chile.
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In Asia, Okay, much bigger population than the Americas. There's only
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seven countries Israel, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, United Arab Emirates, Singapore,
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South Korea, and Japan. And the only other countries well Western Europe most
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of that the water is drinkable there, and then Australia and New Zealand.
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I mean, this seems to be a lot bigger problem because so much disease
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comes from bad top water. But in any of that, Yeah, so
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it's a big deal. Why don't we track deaths by people who get cholera
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and dysentery and all these other diseases that come from a dirty water. Oh
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yeah, that's the thing. Well, you know, there's there was a
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paper just written by Colin Carlson at Georgetown University and he said, we've had
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four million climate deaths in the last twenty years. But if you look,
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if you look down into the paper, he says, di a real disease
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is a reason is one of the reasons for climate is a climate death,
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or malaria is a climate death. And even even cardiovascular disease he calls the
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climate deaths. So you know, if you call any of those things a
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climate disease, you can call anything a climate disease. Yeah, yeah,
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which, Hey, the diarrhea specifically comes from from water. We know that,
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so all right, so if it's climate death. Hey, so I'll
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accept that bad water is climate death. Fix it. That's something we can
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fix a lot easier than anything else. Right, We've proven it. You
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know, when the United States military sets up a base somewhere, the first
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thing they do is put in a water purification unit, right, I mean
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this is solvable. Important to problem with that. You know, your listeners
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might not know why they invented tea in China about two thousand BC. They
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boil They used to boil their water, and when you boil water, it
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takes in all little things out of it that make it taste good. So
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then they started adding tea. They added tea ingredients, and that's supposedly how
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tea was invented early on is because of boiling the water. Hey. So
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it's perfect example of what you're saying here, it's like, you know,
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if we're going to really look at this stuff and really focus in on it,
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then you know, let's let's get real about it. Where can we
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make the most difference. I think you spend a billion dollars on water purification
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in India or in Pakistan or wherever, you're going to get a lot more
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bang for your buck than anything else. Right, Well, the whole climate
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movement is a tremendous misallocation of resources. The world is spending about a trillion
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dollars right now on renewables, primarily wind and solar, some biofuels, when
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all these problems are out there to be solved, not only water, but
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there's a number of diseases that kill a million people a year. We're short
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of electricity. We have seven hundred million people that don't have access to electricity
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and about two billion that have blackouts and brownouts every other day. So there
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are a number of major problems to be solved that we need to be putting
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money toward, and not toward trying to stop the planet from warming out.
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Yeah, well, hey, maybe sanity is coming. Maybe the bottom line
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being negatively affected by these misguided goals. Maybe that's going to bring some sanity
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here. Huh. We are saying some size of a green breakdown coming.
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Yeah, all right, all right, Hey, where do we find your
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work? How do we connect with you on the web? Where do we
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get your books? Yeah, my latest book, Green Breakdown and Coming Renewable
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Energy Failure. They can go to my website Steve Gorham g O R E
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H A M dot com. I'll send them a signed copy. Great book
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talks all about the energy transition. That's got a lot of great sidebars in
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it, like that scientists in Sweden wants people to eat human flesh to stop
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global warming. Or the cosmetic surgeon in California was taking human tissue and running
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his vehicles on it. That's nice. Hey, you know, why are
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they trying to get us to eat bugs? Steve? One last question?
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What is it? Why do they like? Why do they think bud protein
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is so wonderful? That's what the UN says, it's lower carbon dioxide emissions,
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plentiful bugs and no thanks. I'm not going to go into the bug
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eating business, but you know, well I won't go into that, but
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it is it is another crazy just another crazy idea to stop global warming.
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Oh, one more thing, there was a teacher in Utah that was actually
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feeding insects to her kids in class as a lesson that they should be eating
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insects and the problems with beef and global warming. Okay, I like that,
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you know, like you know, that's where I draw the line.
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Okay, I want to save the planet, but I'm not eating bugs to
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save the planet, right right, And and then you know, you get
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well, I don't even want to get into the whole carnivore versus you know,
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plant based thing. But plant based uh philosophy seems to be an extension
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of this climate thing, right, yes it is. Yeah, the UN
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says it something like eighteen percent of global emissions are from agriculture. And if
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we eat less be if we can stop that, we have less cattle emitting
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methane from the nose end and the tail end, we can stop that.
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Okay, Well good, I'm feeling good about things now. If it were
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only that simple to solve the world's problems. And wow, anyways, hey
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got a question for Steve myself. Kl at Carrie Lutz dot com and make
15:56
sure you go to Financial Survival Network dot com sign up for you for newsletter.
16:00
A link to Steve's site will be present and we appreciate you coming back
16:06
on Steve. We'll talk to you again real soon. Okay, thanks,
16:08
carry all the best, Thanks for listening to Carrie Lenz's Financial Survival Network,
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your solution to today's trying times. For the latest, go to Financial Survivalnetwork
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dot com. Financial Survival Network now more than ever,