Source: Republican anti-ESG push complicates faith-based impact investing | National Catholic Reporter
As heat waves blazed across the U.S. in July, what was later declared the hottest month on record, House Republicans held a series of hearings grilling investment practices based on environmental, social and governance criteria, or ESG.
The monthlong inquiries, aimed at what conservative lawmakers and their allies call “woke capitalism,” produced an unexpected target of interest: Seventh Generation Interfaith Coalition for Responsible Investment, a contingent of 40 faith-based institutions, mostly Catholic congregations of women and men religious.
Letters from the House Judiciary Committee sought all communications and documents the world’s largest proxy adviser firms — Institutional Shareholder Services and Glass Lewis — and others had with Seventh Generation Interfaith Coalition and fellow shareholder engagement organizations, alleging they may have colluded and violated U.S. antitrust law in advocating American companies to decarbonize their assets and achieve net-zero greenhouse gas emissions in their operations.
It was the second time in six months Seventh Generation Interfaith was named by conservative politicians investigating ESG-guided investing. A March letter from Republican attorneys general for 21 states lumped the faith investing coalition among “some of the most radical ESG activists” who use shareholder resolutions to press companies to align with the goals of the Paris Agreement on climate change and reach net-zero emissions globally by 2050 to wean economies worldwide off the use of fossil fuels….
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