Republicans’ refusal to be honest with their voters is self-destructive

We already knew that Republican officials don’t care about environmental sustainability. Forty years of climate-change denialism and rhetoric made that perfectly clear. But now we’ve learned just how far GOP leaders will go to keep their eyes and ears closed to the reality of climate change unfolding around them — up to and including their willingness to sacrifice the pensions and retirement accounts of millions of Americans, leaving them high and dry in retirement while the world floods around them.

When Hurricane Ian struck the coast of Florida last September, it was the deadliest hurricane to hit the Sunshine State since the Great Depression and the third most expensive in state history. Ian’s damage was so severe that even Florida’s Republican governor, Ron Desantis, was forced to temporarily cease hostilities and presidential electioneering and work cooperatively with President Joe Biden to obtain federal benefits for his state.

Just one month after Ian, Hurricane Nicole’s strong northeast winds created massive erosion on Florida’s eastern coast that left dozens of houses, condos and swimming pools dangling over the ocean.

Last week, torrential rainfall dropped more than two feet of water onto southern Florida, causing significant damage to businesses, homes and streets in the Miamifort Lauderdale region. The flooding was so severe that Wednesday, the Fort Lauderdale-hollywood International Airport, the 15th-busiest airport in the United States, was forced to close.

Climate change has wreaked havoc in the Sunshine State for years.

Yet despite the massive loss of life and billions of dollars in damage and lost economic activity, Florida’s Republican-controlled legislature — under the leadership of Desantis — charged forward last week with legislation that will outlaw state and local agencies from investing state pension funds in the stock of companies attempting to mitigate the risks of climate change.

The efforts are part of a broader campaign by the national Republican Party to outlaw public investments that consider environmental, social and governance (ESG) factors. At least seven states have limited or prohibited public entities from considering ESG factors when investing state funds. Many of these laws also call to divest existing stakes in asset management companies that value ESG, including Blackrock, the world’s largest asset manager and among the most stable for return on investment. Lawmakers in another 13 states have either proposed or declared their intent to propose laws designed to further limit ESG considerations in state investments.

GOP officials such as Florida’s Desantis have argued that ESG is a form of “woke” capitalism that sacrifices profits for the sake of politics. The phrase “get woke, go broke,” has even been used by some conservatives on social media. But experts say that considering long-term sustainability and engaging in inclusive campaigns to attract diverse customers and employees is often lucrative for businesses and important to investors.

A study by Mckinsey, one of the oldest and largest business consulting firms in the United States, found that, “The overwhelming weight of accumulated research finds that companies that pay attention to environmental, social and governance concerns do not experience a drag on value creation — in fact, quite the opposite. A strong ESG proposition correlates with higher equity returns from both a tilt and momentum perspective. Better performance in ESG also corresponds with a reduction in downside risk ...”

This is common sense. How can a company be profitable if its manufacturing plant is flooded or its offices are under constant threat of being closed or destroyed by an environmental disaster?

It’s true that taking ESG factors seriously might mean that a company will spend a bit more in the short term to prepare for potential risks or court new customer bases. But in exchange the company will gain greater long-term predictability, reliability and profitability.

Recent data also suggests that Esg-focused companies are better equipped to weather economic uncertainty caused by external factors like the COVID pandemic and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. In fact, during the first year of the pandemic, Esg-focused funds beat the overall market according to S&P Global.

That is why a survey by Ernst & Young found that “More than three-quarters (78%) of investors surveyed think companies should make investments that address ESG issues relevant to their business, even if it reduces profits in the short term.” Moreover, they found that “74% of investors who use a rigorous and structured approach to investing utilize companies’ ESG disclosures as a part of their investment decision-making.”

In other words, ESG isn’t just good for the planet or good for liberal “woke” activists, it’s good for business. Desantis and other GOP politicians who want to use the power of the state to meddle in business decisions are investing state funds unwisely and costing their states money simply to advance their personal political ambition to curry favor with the radical right.

Yet Desantis and the GOP don’t seem to care. The once proud Republican Party is now so obsessed with being anti-woke — a word members of the party frequently are unable, when asked, to define — that they have thrown building long-term sustainability and profitability out the window for short-term opportunities to “own the libs.”

They are forbidding financial experts from looking 30 or 50 years out when making decisions about pension and retirement investments and gambling with our future planet and future pocketbooks for the chance to achieve personal short-term political goals.

This is irresponsible and downright shameful. The American people should reject this dangerous gambit by defeating the GOP until it have no chips left to bring to the table. And Americans must not tolerate politicians using government funds for their narrow personal goals. Nor should we support politicians who demand that businesses obey purely political orders or risk retaliation from the government, which Desantis does almost daily. That is what dictators do, and Florida is paying the price for putting an aspiring dictator in office.