By Robert Bradley Jr.
“Is #ESG and climate hysteria also part of this subversion to attack democractic and capitalist principles? Is ESG just a cloak for a socialist grab on corporations to strangle capitalism from within?”
“For anyone thinking there’s a more community spirited version of capitalism through more state intervention, read Animal Farm by George Orwell again. It’s called collectivism, socialism, marxism, ultimately totalitarianism.”
Desiree Fixler (above quotations) is a voice worth listening to. With her courageous out-of-step views being commonsensical, she has an important future in the UK/EU debates over corporate responsibility–and climate change policy in particular. Her large, growing audience attests to her integrity.
“Desiree is a leading expert in the field of sustainable finance and investment banking with over 25 years of experience in innovating and reshaping financial markets,” her bio reads. “Renowned for blowing the whistle on the dark side of ESG, she is a sought-after advisor, media contributor, and keynote speaker.”
Continuing,
Desiree is well-known for her practical, first principles approach to sustainability and helps companies navigate the fractured and often overdemanding world of ESG. She serves as a trusted advisor to corporations, NGOs, and regulators such as the UK’s Financial Conduct Authority and the Monetary Authority of Singapore, and is at the forefront of global efforts to drive greater transparency, practicality and impact in the practice of sustainable finance. [1]
———————-
Enough introduction. I became acquainted with Ms. Fixler with her comment some months ago
If you haven’t read Ayaan Hirsi Ali’s compelling long essay in The Free Press on X, read it now. And then consider this. Is #ESG and climate hysteria also part of this subversion to attack democractic and capitalist principles? Is ESG just a cloak for a socialist grab on corporations to strangle capitalism from within?
Sounds far-fetched. I mean for many in the finance industry, ESG is just a sensible framework to spot commercial opportunities and to assess risk. But is it? Did property insurers just wake up to fire and flood risk when some repurposed PR or consultant guy, new to ESG, sent them a SASB sector disclosure list? Was Denmark’s Orsted wise to quickly transition to an almost fully renewable energy company in light of its share price collapse? Are ESG equity investors satisfied earning 11% vs 21% for regular equity funds over the last year (reported today in the FT according to JPM research)?
She then tells her personal journey.
I believe most people, including myself, jumped on to this bandwagon believing that climate action and DEI are win-wins, that ESG is prudent risk management. In 2019, we applauded the Business Roundtable championing stakeholder capitalism. It felt good to soften capitalism to promote the “doing well by doing good” creed. And the money started rolling in because “saving the planet” sells. But so did investment underperformance, regulation and votes for politicians intent on limiting economic growth.
This feel-good initiative got out of control through mis-selling, debilitating regulation, wrong cost/benefit analysis, end of the world hysteria, vulture self-interest groups and bad energy policies, with a disregard to the cost and safety impact on citizens.
Just look at Europe readying to jump off a socialist cliff with its Green Deal and CBDC. By abandoning cost/benefit analysis, the EU is intent on increasing energy costs while ramping up nefarious controls on trade, production, innovation and money, robbing the continent of a decent economic future. And having no impact on overall global emissions.
She ends on a note of realism:
Climate change is real but so is war, geopolitical risk, social unrest, limits on free speech and the cost of living crisis.
For anyone thinking there’s a more community spirited version of capitalism through more state intervention, read Animal Farm by George Orwell again. It’s called collectivism, socialism, marxism, ultimately totalitarianism.
Fossil fueled capitalism is flawed but it’s the best system for growth, social mobility, climate adaptation, energy transition, innovation and civil rights. I really hope folks think things through and consider Ayaan’s poignant essay, especially as we all head to the ballot box.
It’s gradual until it’s sudden.
So much said in the above paragraphs. The future belongs to the courageous and logical. Desiree Fixler is a game changer that the UK/EU, not to mention many other countries, needs to hear.
—————
[1] Some more history and introduction:
In a defining moment during her tenure as Group Sustainability Officer at Deutsche Bank’s asset manager, DWS, Desiree exposed material greenwashing at the company- huge disparities between public ESG claims and internal statements and actions. When her concerns as well as her job were dismissed by the C-suite and Board, she decided to speak out publicly. Subsequent investigations by US and German authorities resulted in a dramatic series of events, including a federal police raid, the removal of the top executives and the largest SEC greenwashing fine to date.
Desiree’s whistleblowing action sent shockwaves throughout the finance industry, catalyzing efforts to tackle greenwashing. She poignantly shares this cautionary yet inspirational story and goes beyond the call for clearer ESG disclosures to emphasize the power of speaking up to drive meaningful change.
Prior to DWS, she has held senior roles at JP Morgan, Deutsche Bank and Zais Group, where she built and managed ESG investing and structured credit businesses. Desiree has also served as a senior advisor to both BlueOrchard and responsAbility Investments to scale blended finance transactions in the institutional capital markets. Her track record of product innovation includes several award-winning and market transformational products, including the development of the iTraxx and CDX indices, as well as a series of impact securitizations.
Desiree holds a BSc Economics (Hons) from the London School of Economics. She is a member of the World Economic Forum’s Global Future Council on Responsible Investing.
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believing that climate action…
Not that bright, then.
Like so many, she recognizes falsehoods about ESG, but not the big lie. Her story is interesting, though. Here’s a 40 second summary of her ESG/greenwashing impact experience. Her cautionary tale seems to be influencing companies to make more honest claims about ESG.
It would be great if climate science could be held to the same standards.
O/T Good laugh from the cognoscenti who read The Guardian
Hak_a_dalan …
A runaway greenhouse effect has already happened in our solar system. Look at Venus. It has a thick carbon dioxide atmosphere now with sulfuric acid clouds which gives the planet a yellow-orange hue. Not unlike the depiction of earth in Mr Rowson’s apocalyptic cartoon.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/picture/2025/jan/17/martin-rowson-global-co2-levels-met-office-carbon-dioxide-emissions-global-heating-cartoon#comment-170379548
What are they imbibing?
Venus is only half the distance to the sun compared to the Earth.
It just shows how deeply indoctrinated they are. And unbelievably stupid.
Venus also has a VERY thick atmosphere.
The Russians landed a vehicle on Venus way back when, and the pressure at the surface was so great that the vehicle was only able to function for a few minutes before it was destroyed by the pressure.
Without a temporal enabled spaceship we will never know how Venus came to be as it is in contrast to Earth.
Personally speaking, I get sick and tired of the speculation.
Not sure what you mean by “temporal enabled spaceship”.
One that can travel billions of years into the past?
I think he means a TARDIS.
I presume there is a way to calculate how the pressure alone raises the surface temperature? (if at all)
It’s called the lapse rate. At the top of the troposphere at about 65 km the temperature and pressure reaches Earth-like levels. Calculate the lapse rate temperatures down to the 93 bar surface pressure and you get the 740K surface temperature. So it is clear that Venusian atmospheric characteristics are primarily a function of atmospheric density and not chemical composition.
“ are primarily a function of atmospheric density and not chemical composition.”
Just like Earth. 🙂
Also the surface is hot as your kitchen oven on “broil” due to lapse rate of about 11 C per kilometer from its top of troposphere about 60 km up….
With an atmosphere 90 times the mass of Earth’s that is composed of supercritical CO2 from I have no idea where right down to the surface…
They also need to look at Mars. It has a similar percentage of CO2 in its atmosphere as Venus but is a frozen wasteland. Ya think maybe that the sun might have something to do with this?
Just saw your good comment.
As if anything could live on Venus due to factors other than the so-called “greenhouse effect”.
Life in its atmosphere is plausible. https://news.mit.edu/2020/life-venus-phosphine-0914
Well the Guardian does support more use of drugs so you could say it is leading by example.
Mars’ atmosphere is also mostly CO2. It decided not to run away though.
Mars has a very “thin” atmosphere, so very little atmospheric pressure to retain surface heat.
More from the Financial Times.
If you go about halfway down this page https://www.climatecatastrophefund.com/ you will be able to watch a short video of a talk given by Stuart Kirk at a Financial Times conference.
He was head of ESG at HSBC bank. His talk threw a few jokes at ESG and climate worriers from an investor viewpoint. The climate worriers had him sacked from HSBC.
The talk is quite amusing unless you are Mark Carney or from Deloittes.
===
For those of you not in finance the reason he says there is no need to worry, unless the whole of modern finance theory is wrong, is because the value of a share is the discounted value of all future dividends – so the costs, if any of climate change are already in the share price.
====
The Financial Times is a climate worrier paper as bad as the Guardian.
The FT is printed on pink paper…
It’s worse actually.
“She poignantly shares this cautionary yet inspirational story and goes beyond the call for clearer ESG disclosures to emphasize the power of speaking up to drive meaningful change.” (My emphasis – dd)
If you are a skeptic of climate alarm, then speak up to stop conceding the “forcing” + “feedback” framing of the investigation of a climate system response to incremental CO2, CH4, N2O.
If you are a climate investigator, then speak up to expose the misuse of GCM simulations in the screamingly obvious circular exercise of running all those “forcing” scenarios.
If you are a meteorologist, then speak up to show how the extreme weather event attribution “studies” have no diagnostic authority at all.
You get the point. Thank you for listening.
If she goes on dropping truth-bombs she’s gonna be kicked out of that gig. And if she doesn’t walk first I will read her words very carefully and sceptically.
“She is a member of the World Economic Forum’s Global Future Council on Responsible Investing.”
Would that be the same World Economic Forum that asserts that a globalized world is best managed by a self-selected coalition of multinational corporations, governments and civil society organizations?
Has something changed?
From the article: “Climate change is real”
What exactly does that mean?
Has this woman seen with her own eyes that CO2 is causing the Earth’s climate to change? That’s the implication.
Does anyone believe she has seen such a thing?
She is operating on what others say. She is depending on others to form her opinion.
Unfortunately, she is not alone. Many, many people have been fooled by the rhetoric surrounding CO2. They think they know more about the CO2 situation than they really know.
There is no evidence showing that CO2 is anything other than a benign gas, essential for life on Earth. There is no evidence that CO2 is causing the Earth’s weather or climate to change. None, whatsoever.
Now, tell me how real climate change is. Show me. it can’t be done. Not by the subject of this article, and not by anyone.
Lots of people operating on speculation and assumptions.
Yes, the ambiguous “climate change is real” line fails to identify any evidence of a cause for concern to begin with. This language seems to be used to soften a challenge to radical activists, by essentially saying, “Yes, you’re right about CO2, but let’s be realistic about the pace of change and the cost, blah, blah, blah…” NO! There never has been any reliable basis in evidence to think that restricting emissions of CO2 will have ANY influence on ANY metric of interest related to the climate system. /rant
“NO!”
I agree! 🙂
I believe in past ice ages .. pardon, glaciations.
“Climate change is real” means about as much to me as “climate change is here”.
Am I meant to think “climate change” is some kind of entity?
A very rich entity 🙂
LOL. An entity that can be used get rich by feeding off the government subsidies or donations from frightened citizens, or sell needless contraptions to mitigate the imagined crisis.
“Climate change” will be the useful idiot of the 21st Century.
“is some kind of entity?”
A sort of booger-man that hides up the nose of wannabe “climate” worriers.
If she didn’t say that, her points would be outright dismissed and she’d lose her job. By saying it’s real, she has a platform amongst “anti-deniers”.
That climate changes is a fact, hence the LIA and MWP, however as a global construct it’s pure hogwash. We live on a hill, the foot of the hill is at sea level, hardiness zone 9, we are 4 kilometres away at 300m elevation, hardiness zone 8. Somewhere between the foot of the road and our place the local climate changes hence the change in hardiness zone, to say climate change is not real is farcical. However, to say that some minor trace gas can change the climate of the Earth is even more farcical.
“That climate changes is a fact,”
I knew somebody would bring that up. 🙂
But her use of the term is that climate change is an assumed, unfortunate thing that is happening to us because of an increase in CO2.
Yes, the climate constantly changes, but it does so in a regular manner, winter follows summer; cool cycles follow warm cycles. Climate change in this case is used as a harbinger of possible doom associated with CO2.
Of course, that is all assumption and nothing else, and I was just pointing that out.
Alarmist Climate Science is totally made up of speculation, assumptions and unsubstantiated assertions, along with a made-up temperature profile. It’s evidence free.
The writer doesn’t seem to be aware of that.
She’s a pretty late convert to realism. It doesn’t take a financial wizard to conclude that the government, or someone’s concept of a socially conscious policy, is never going to work, rather than letting the free market and free people make reasoned choices in allocating resources and doing business.
It was disappointing to read the responses to her post.
Almost universally they were criticizing her for doubting the IPCC narrative, and more than a few proclaimed that the first thing we need to do in order to save the planet, is to get rid of capitalism.
More encouraging, her opinions are evolving.
From Financial News (6/24): Fixler does believe in climate change, as well as sustainable and development finance that helps countries and businesses cope with the effects of a warming planet. However, she says she does not believe there is a climate crisis: “Self-interest groups want to promote ESG and the climate hysteria because they’re making a bundle on all their ESG data ratings, all the consultancy gigs. They want more regulation because that’s more fees.”
Fixler’s deeply cynical stance is a noticeable departure from her public views of just a year ago.
Let’s hope the incoming administration puts a kibosh to all this nonsense: climate change, green energy, renewable subsides, DEI, CRT and the rest of the progressive lefts “virtue” signaling.
Trump will keep whatever he sees as a money-maker. We probably won’t know who the money is being made for….but it will look like it’s being made for those who need it.
Climate action requires the belief that individual choices made on a daily basis affects the weather.
There is no way around this belief. Prior beliefs were that dancing, banging drums, throwing virgins into volcanoes and burning witches would accomplish beneficial climate results.
Current beliefs are that not mining and using the Earth’s natural resources will accomplish beneficial climate results.
Of course, it’s easy to believe what you want to. I believe that if you wish hard enough, Tinkerbell will come back. This has been confirmed for me now for over 4 generations, as she comes back every night at Disneyland just before the firework show. Me, my children, my grandchildren and now my great grandchildren have all seen it happen.
I also believe climate change is real, catastrophic anthropogenic global warming on the other hand is a complete lie. There is a big difference.
She says: “I believe most people, including myself, jumped on to this bandwagon believing that climate action and DEI are win-wins, that ESG is prudent risk management.”
She must mean people in big banks and so forth when she says most people.
Born in 1976, she missed the ’70s “coming ice age” stuff and is of an age such that she was fed all the AGW schist of the late 1990s and early 2000s. Many scientists did not “jump on the bandwagon.” The Bookmarks on the right side of WUWT provide a partial list.
Good points!
She assumes too much.
The woman is a late convert. She’s possibly sincere, but probably noticed shifting political winds some time ago. And she is an “advisor” which simply put is a nice way of saying rent seeker. When did Vanguard begin to change position? That would be around December 2022. I submit that’s the signal that finance began to wake-up.