After years of headlines about the growing environmental, social, and governance (ESG) movement in investing, ESG has been met with understandable skepticism from taxpayers, who both underwrite state and local government pension plans and government borrowing. After all, if the managers of these operations take their focus off properly balancing risk and return–pursuing ideological investment goals instead–taxpayers could be on the hook for hundreds of billions in additional liabilities. Yet, that focus must go in both directions. Forcing those managers to reflexively embrace ESG or to reflexively shun it could deprive taxpayers of the market-based innovation, resilience, and long-term value we’re counting on to avoid a financial meltdown.
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