“Life is infinitely stranger than anything which the mind of man could invent. We would not dare to conceive the things which are really mere commonplaces of existence.”

Sherlock Holmes in The Complete Sherlock Holmes by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

sherlock holmes silhouette in studio on white background (GETTY)

This is a case that would challenge even the genus of Sherlock Holmes. Alaska is presenting itself as a leader in sustainability while disavowing this has anything to do with ESG. I will now recount the case in as forthright and accurate manner as I can, leaving out nothing significant and important while simultaneously striving to avoid the distracting and unimportant in order to not impede the reader’s ability to solve one of the most puzzling ESG cases I have encountered in my life. I leave it to the reader solve as I am only Dr. Watson in this puzzling tale.

“I am afraid, my dear Watson, that most of your conclusions were erroneous. When I said that you stimulated me I meant, to be frank, that in noting your fallacies I was occasionally guided towards the truth.” The Hound of the Baskervilles

On January 30, 2023 Alaska’s Republican Attorney General issued a press release proudly proclaiming that “Alaska Attorney General Treg Taylor joined 24 states in a lawsuit against the Biden Administration to stop a new U.S. Department of Labor rule that pushes ESG (Environmental, Social, and Governance) investing, which may risk the retirement savings of some two-thirds of the U.S. population or 152 million workers.” The co-leads on this lawsuit are Texas AG Ken Paxton and Utah AG Sean Reyes. Like so much (most, really) of this Red state anti-ESG nonsense it is grounded in ideology, not fact.

The press release explains that “ESG investing is an investment strategy that emphasizes a firm’s governance structure or the environmental or social impacts of the firm’s products or practices.” I don’t quite get the “or” part, but I’ll roll with that and ignore the fact that good governance is important for shareholder value creation. As I’ve explained in this piece “Rescuing ESG from the Culture Wars” with my Republican buddy Dan Crowley (yeah, I’m a Democrat who likes having Republican friends 🐥), ESG is merely “a means for helping companies identify and communicate to investors the material long-term risks they face from ESG-related issues.” Mr. Taylor is confounding ESG integration with impact investing and implying that the latter is concessionary. I have explained the difference between ESG and impact and how they are related to sustainability at both the company and system level. Clearly Mr. Taylor never read this piece 🥲.

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