ESG 시스템의 성장...“종교의 자유를 위협하고 있다” [처치 & 스테이트]

There's a quote that says America will never be destroyed from the outside. If we falter and lose our freedoms, it will be because we destroyed ourselves. ESG, which stands for Environmental Social Governance. ESG. Is a business scoring system that ranks businesses based on their responses to woke ideologies. ESG can be a win-win for everyone. Much like the social credit scores of communist China. It's a joke. Complete fraud. Those who do not acquire an acceptable score, of course, they're punished in the marketplace. While these scores only directly affect businesses at this time. Elon Musk knew that this was coming. It's a soft introduction to social credit. And who knows what the repercussion for churches and Christians could be if this system continues to grow. The entire ESG movement is just another way to circumnavigate around the American voters. As ESG expands into more mainstream functions such as lending requirements, this will have ultimately a detrimental effect on religious liberty. Woke policies are quietly and consistently chipping away at our freedoms. If we aren't careful, one day we'll wake up and all of our freedoms could be a distant future and just a nostalgic memory. One we never saw coming. On today's episode, we're going to be diving into woke America's newest obsession, ESG, and breaking down the potential ramifications for people of faith. I'm your host, Lucas Miles, and this is Church and State. My name is Lucas Miles. I'm an ordained minister and best-selling author. The church has been invaded. By whom? Same ideology that's attacking our state. Marxism. They want a church that bows down to the state. They want a church that worships the state. So if you want to stay informed on the most critical issues regarding religious freedom and the Christian faith, then you've come to the right place. This is Church and State. Welcome back to the show. I believe that this is an important episode. I'm sure that many of you out there, especially if you're already a fan of this show and you've been watching our programming, or perhaps you're tuning into other programs here on Epoch Times, that you're well aware of the dangers of ESG and really the importance of us understanding this and pushing back against it. But I want to make sure that we can fill in those gaps. And specifically for those maybe that aren't as familiar with it, I hope to break that down a little bit more for you on today's episode. But I also want to look at the ramifications of ESG in regards to religious freedom, which I think is an area that isn't talked about as much. First off, again, as I mentioned in the intro, ESG stands for Environmental Social Governance. It's a way of basically rating a business in order to see how it stands up, you know, based upon these predetermined factors that woke America or the New World Order has for society that your business has to abide by in order to get a particular score. Publicly traded companies are evaluated based upon this. They're given a score and ultimately that affects their investability. You know, one time CEOs of companies and boards of companies, their job was to produce profits for their shareholders. Not anymore. Now companies are putting ESG scores over profits. And so even if something affects profitability, they're still going to go in that direction because they don't want their ESG score affected. The biggest problem is that there's evidence emerging that it's becoming a placebo, a deadly distraction, because we're putting all our effort into this and we're ignoring what the experts are telling us. Specifically in these three things, environmental, social governance, what does environmental have to do with? It has to do with, looks at things like energy use, land use, reliance on fossil fuels. So if you're a company that is already in the automotive field or some sort of manufacturer that relies on fossil fuels or energy sources that woke America has determined are not as morally, you know, superior to their, you know, choices of wind and solar, then you're automatically docked. And so right from the beginning, your score is depleted and you don't stand a chance because there's actually no way that you can really fulfill it to the standard of which is set before you. And as I've talked to multiple people in businesses that are evaluated based upon their ESG, one of the things I'm hearing is that very frequently people are sort of fudging their ESG reporting because they know that they can't meet up to this standard. And so they're sort of just, you know, fudging these numbers a little bit in order to boost their score up. And it's actually, you know, at the end of the day, we're not actually seeing even what the real score is to begin with. Why? Because everybody in this understands, especially depending upon what industry you're in, how impossible this is and how bad for American business it is. Take McDonald's, for example. Its total emissions are those that match the entire country of Portugal or Hungary. And much of those emissions come from its use of beef. But when MSCI gave it an ESG rating upgrade in April 2021, it did that by reducing the weighting of emissions from a mere 5% to nothing and instead replacing it with a new initiative that McDonald's had launched around recycling. Except that the recycling initiative came from installing bins in select locations in the UK and France. The social side of this, this is how the company treats its employees. It then treats, you know, suppliers. It's also how the company handles HR policies. The Coca-Cola company teaching its employees to be less white. You heard that right. I did not make it up. You got to be less white. How it handles policies of diversity, equity, inclusion, which is a major part of the ESG score. Already, as people of faith, there's going to be some problems with how woke America treats diversity, equity, inclusion, and how people of faith view a divine God-given equality that we have as believers. And so there's going to be some pushback there right from the beginning. And lastly, we have this governance issue. It kind of applies to all of the aspects of the company. And so all of these numbers are put together to get this score that then is used to look at the investability of the company, the success of the company. Again, in many cases, the ESG score is being looked at more so even than profits or profitability in determining the investability of this particular company. As I mentioned here, this is very similar to China's social credit score. In 2014, the Communist Party called for a system to allow the trustworthy to roam everywhere under heaven while making it hard for the discredited to take a single step. In trials across the country, cameras and spyware are watching, mapping your digital footprint to every step you take. What you do, say, and even think is being monitored and marked against you. And so, you know, essentially what we're seeing with this is that individuals are evaluated based upon the standard that the Chinese Communist Party has set on how they line up with these certain behaviours that the Chinese Communist Party wants to reward. And so, you know, did you jaywalk this week? On social media that you shared that maybe didn't really fit the standard? And as a result, what's happening? Being discredited makes it hard to get a job, a loan, a hotel room. No more five star for you. You're going to be in that little Howard Johnson or that Motel 6 now because you know what? The way you crossed the street the other day or the fact that you chewed gum and you missed the trash can when you threw it away. We saw that on our cameras that are everywhere and we're just going to dock your score a little bit. It's bad for business in America, but it is just the beginning. And that's what's so important to see here. This is the start. This is a soft introduction to social credit score and what you're seeing already, you know, with cancel culture on social media by big tech, etc. That is only going to get worse once the government gets involved and we actually have a rating based upon all of our attributes. Well, you know what? You can't go to church this week because you posted something that we don't really agree with. So, you know, we're just going to shut down power to your electric car with our little master switch that we have. So you can't actually go shopping this week. Sorry, but you know what? Maybe next time you'll learn to follow the system that we've put in place here. And this is really, you know, what comes next after ESG. And you might go, that sounds far fetched. That sounds extreme. This is scare tactics, Lucas. I would agree with you if it weren't already happening in other places in the world, like communist China, which so much of this current administration is looking to for the policies that we have right now. So don't tell me that the Biden administration is not seeing what's happening in communist China and going, hey, maybe we should put this in place here. And of course, it's not just the administration. It's also globalist investors, leftist investors, the Soros is of the world that are pushing this. And one of the reasons I think this is important, you know, we look at ESG, why is it happening? Why is it? It's just because we care about the environment. We care about this. We care about that. Yes, there are aspects of that that I believe there's ideology behind it. And we could even look at aspects of ESG and say, look, some of these things are good things until they become mandated. And this is exactly what we saw with COVID. You know, it's not necessarily that every idea that the left has is wrong. Although most of their ideas are wrong. But it's the moment that you make something a mandate in such a way that if you don't abide by this, you know, our opinion to this thing, that then you are somehow docked. These aren't just basic safety laws. This is actually crippling America businesses. Let me give you, you know, a couple of reasons why. So first off, America already has the cleanest manufacturing facilities, the highest level of standards. So when you insert ESG on top of this, companies that are already spending thousands and hundreds of thousands, in some cases, millions of dollars on their current level of standard, now all of a sudden has to raise that budget by 25% just to meet, you know, a basic, you know, solid ESG score for their manufacturing. Now, do you think China is doing the same thing in their government run factories? No, of course not. Ironically, BlackRock controls about the same amount of shares, about 7.5% of PetroChina as they do Exxon. But they don't engage in any of the same behavior when it comes to that company. They don't push for net zero policies. They don't fiddle with the board of directors. I think if they did, Larry Fink would find himself not welcome in mainland China very quickly because we know how that government acts. This is one reason why some, you know, US businesses send their manufacturing to China. Why? Because there's certain costs that they can cut in order to be able to lower the cost of production. What costs are being cut? Specifically, they're actually avoiding certain things. So China is sort of introducing this at a social level and they're sort of pushing this out on the rest of the world when they themselves are not following ESG within their own manufacturing facilities. It's the same standard that we're seeing here in the US. So as we cripple American businesses by, you know, requiring them to go to this standard, what do American businesses do? They go, look, this is too expensive to try to meet this standard here in the US. We're going to start sending this stuff overseas. Who benefits from this? Communist China benefits from this, of course. And so, you know, this is the cycle that we're seeing that really the sinister nature of ESG is it's not there to help make businesses more profitable. It's not there to make the environment better or to make Earth better for humans. No, because the left views humans as parasites. It's all about helping the environment, but not helping the actual standard of living for individuals on planet Earth. And I'll show you an example later here that we're seeing in Sri Lanka of where ESG has completely backfired. So we'll talk about that at the end of the show. A couple of things here, according to Glenn Beck, ESG investments rose from $10 billion in 2015. $10 billion is a lot of money to now over $246 billion in March of 2021. That is an astronomical increase in just a very short period of time. Of course, the Trump administration tried to put some things in place to begin to limit some of the investment into ESG and limit some of the power of this. But of course, the new administration is full throttle pushing this even harder. Basically, you know, the advocates of ESG, they would say things like this is an opportunity for people to put their money where their mouth is and these certain policies. But the way it's playing out ultimately is hurting business and it's hurting the employees specifically because employees are losing their jobs over not being able to meet a certain standard. You know, I'm sorry, your skin color doesn't line up with our ESG requirements. So although you've been doing a great job at this plant for the last 30 years and your father who worked with us for the last 40 years before that, he was a great employee. Sorry, you know what? We got to let you go because we have to replace you with some other people in order to get our ESG score up. I'm sure you understand because you're socially responsible, right? And you'll take this and it'll be good for you in the long run. And look, if it's good for the environment, it's good for you. I mean, this is the attitude in which ESG is being rolled out in this country. It's arrogant, it's bad for business, it's bad for the employee and ultimately it is not doing what they're saying it's doing for the environment, you know, for social circumstances, etc. So as we keep looking at this, one place I want to go is I want to go to a friend of ours, James Lindsay. You've heard of James Lindsay. James Lindsay is just a brilliant thinker. He has been speaking out against wokeness and ESG for several years and has really made quite a big splash in America in helping people to understand the dangers of these things. Elon Musk is completely right. This thing is a scam. The scam is used to enable a financial cartel because it manages possibly, I've heard numbers anywhere between $6 and $20 trillion of primarily people's pensions, people's retirements, other people's money, not their own money. They're not investing their own money. They're investing the retirement funds primarily. They have the leverage to be able to use this like a gun to the head, a financial gun to the head of any corporation that doesn't do what it wants them to do. This is a blatant weaponization. In fact, it's racketeering is what it is. This is criminal racketeering. Get a recent tweet here where he says with ESG, they will no longer need your vote to enact the Green New Deal. The woke elites will decide for you. They will tell your company if you should be laid off or hired due to skin color. You will eat soy and bugs and be happy. First of all, this tweet is so James Lindsay and just really the voice in which he shares, which I love, but also he does just a brilliant job of exposing, you know, the issue behind this. This is an opportunity for the left to push things like the Green New Deal without ever passing the Green New Deal. This is the left's way around the constitution. This is the left's way around, you know, our Congress and Senate, around the we, the people. It's their way around these things because they don't even have to go through Congress. They don't even have to make this a law if they can get corporate America on board in order to enact this themselves. It's sort of this corporate fascism. It's corporate Marxism in these ways where it is using American corporations and global corporations in order to push Marxist ideology on the people of the United States and really around the world without having to ever take it to a vote. And this is why this is so insidious. If it were just happening in the polls, we could rally, we could go, we could, you know, really work the vote and show up and make our voices heard. But this is happening in these corporations that are deciding these things outside of the state house. And it limits our ability to be able to have a say as we, the people in what is happening. James Lindsay gives a couple more reasons here. He says ESG exists for three reasons. First off, he says it's a sword to implement, divide and conquer and box out competition. It's exactly what's happening as more and more business is going to China and also more business is going to only the largest corporations who can actually afford to abide by these ESG principles and get that high score. So the mom and pop businesses out there, the small town manufacturers and other corporations that are there, they're not gonna stand a chance because they don't have the budgets to be able to, you know, waste money on things like ESG the way that these large corporations do that are okay taking a loss in these areas because they're making their money elsewhere. He says it's also a shield to look morally virtuous while doing it. Of course, this is virtue signaling at its finest to really, you know, flex your ESG score and all the things that you're doing, you know, all the while you're really in bed with communist China, who by the way is not going to stop their sweatshops and is not gonna stop their organ harvesting and these things because they don't have to because what they're doing is not under the same standard as the rest of the world that is now bought into this woke ESG score. It's a perfect, brilliant scheme to weaken everybody else as the communist party around the world gets strengthened. And lastly, James says number three is to install arbitrary power, DEI, diversity, equity, inclusion, ESG and other political officers and to enforce compliance with its arbitrary standards. So now it's not just enough to self-report your score. We're actually gonna create some new positions around here. We're gonna put some officers in place to make sure that your reporting is going the way that we think it needs to. And if it doesn't, you know what? We're gonna show up at your place. We're gonna knock on your door. We're gonna tour around your facility a little bit to make sure your numbers line up. And if they don't, guess what? You're punished in the marketplace. And ultimately, if ESG goes in the next level of the social score in America, you're gonna be punished with the ability to shop, where you can drive, where you can vacation, all of these things, just like is happening in communist China. James does a brilliant job of pointing those things out. You know, a place where we're seeing this specifically really start up in this country, and I think it's probably the most developed in America in this sense is in the banking system. Now it's certainly in other corporations and investments and companies that are in America, especially those that are publicly traded, but we're seeing it in the banking system more than anything. One thing that you can do is you can talk to your banker and find out if they are, you know, subject themselves to ESG. You know, what that's probably gonna do is it's gonna lead you to more local banks, local banks and credit unions that aren't, you know, dependent upon national investors and the market in general. And they're looking to really manage things within a local community and ensure that local people are treated well and that they have financial resources that they need in order to be successful in business. That's one thing that you can do initially to fight against ESG. Now, I mentioned earlier electric cars and the ability to sort of turn those things off. Here's one way that that could play out. Give this a watch. And you get a notification that pops up on your cell phone that says, sorry, your car, because they're trying to push for all electric cars. I wonder why. Your car has been disabled for the next 48 hours. Which is happening right now. And by the way, you now only have power for six hours a day due to the post that you posted on December 13th. And here's what they'll do. They'll say, if you think this is wrong, please submit your appeal here. Yeah, please submit your appeal and we'll get back to you in 48 hours after your car's turned back on. Yeah. But it's just like, if you guys can't see that that's a possibility now, then you can't see anything. That's scary. The idea that the government can decide when you can drive, where you can drive, how far you can drive, all based upon a post that you shared on social media, on Twitter, on TikTok. That's frightening. And look, I don't say this just to scare you guys. I'm not into just, you know, promoting fear and trying to, you know, push fear on people to get them all riled up. This is happening in places around the world. And while a lot of people in America are sort of asleep, they don't know what's happening. They're not paying any attention to this. These policies keep creeping in closer and closer upon and surrounding the American people. And these things are starting to become a reality. You know, one of the individuals I really respect in this space who talks out against this is Glenn Beck. You know, Glenn talks specifically about how ESG is, you know, really going to affect society as a whole. Our society is being completely redesigned with something called ESGs. They are going to make tons of money. Social justice has now been monetized. This is going to be a very unpleasant and socially unpleasant transition that we all have to go through. Now, we actually don't all have to go through that. No, no, you're deciding you and those of you in Davos. This is the Davos plan. You know, we've all heard go woke, go broke, but this doesn't seem to be true anymore because there's so many companies that are thriving. They're doubling down on this. They're not backing off. What do they know that we don't know? See, ESG, they are investing in this because they know that this is the future of the marketplace, or at least what they believe to be the future of the marketplace. ESG is a window into a company's future. Together, we are working toward a smarter future for all. These are smart people. These aren't idiots. They're not just, you know, these blind liberals, these dumb liberals, as people would call them. These are smart people that are pushing their finances into what they believe is the next thing as part of this great reset in order to move their money into an area that they believe is going to pay a dividend. It's going to pay a return because they're going to be benefited by either the social market or by this Marxist-controlled, government-controlled, communist-controlled marketplace that they're going to receive the payout for that. And they literally seem to be seeing this as a long-term investment that they're willing to put into their company because they believe they're going to get a return. Ultimately, ESG, what it does is it drives business from the shareholder to the stakeholder. You know, this social part of ESG, really all that it is, is it's anti-white, it's anti-faith, it's anti-family, it's anti-police, and it's woke. That's really what's behind the social side of environmental social governance. So when we look at all this, what does this mean for us as Christians? What does this mean for us as people of faith? What does it mean, you know, for somebody who has a belief system that doesn't line up with woke ideology, that doesn't line up with anti-law enforcement, anti-family, that doesn't line up with anti- all these other things that wokeism stands for. Where do we sit? What happens to us? Ultimately, Christians and people of faith are going to be put in a position, if this continues to grow, if it continues to flourish, to have to decide whether or not you're going to stand for your faith, or if you're going to choose convenience and participate in this woke system in order to be able to say, feed your family, or in order to be able to go where you want to go, or in order to be able to drive your car. For fear of being docked, for fear of being canceled, for fear of being shut down, there will be Christians, there will be people of faith, that will begin to bend upon the tenets of their belief system, and they will just give lip service to these things just because they don't want to suffer the consequences. We've seen this in every single persecution against the church that has ever happened, but there will be those, and I hope it's the great majority of those, who are believers, who will refuse to back down, who will refuse to give in to this, that will say no to wokeism, that will say no to an LGBT agenda, that will say no to, you know, corporate Marxism, that will say no to socialism in America, and those Christians will face persecution in some form if ESG is allowed to continue, and especially if it's allowed to be pushed down into a social scoring system in this nation. Heritage Foundation, they did an article here, it's called, What is Wrong with ESG Wokeism? I want to share a couple of their big takeaways that they had, because like always, Heritage Foundation is just excellent at nailing this, they're on top of it, they're cutting edge, and I just love the guys over there. Here's a couple of their three top takeaways. They said that ESG advocates force companies to take positions in the political arena on issues that may have nothing to do with the company's actual business activities. So ESG is forcing companies to take positions in the political arena on issues that may have nothing to do with the company's actual business. I mean, you remember when Coke used to make beverages? Apparently they don't do that anymore. Now all they do is they push woke ideology through their commercials, that seems to be why they exist. Do you remember when Starbucks just used to make, okay, maybe Starbucks never just made coffee, but I seem to remember a day where they might've just made coffee, but now coffee's like secondary to pushing woke ideology. They're being forced into these areas, these political arenas that have nothing to do with their actual business. And of course, we expect that from these global juggernaut companies. But when we start seeing that from manufacturers that have been built on sort of hardworking American people and the American way of life, and now we're seeing those companies give into this, my guess is if you work at a big company, they probably are looking at ESG. They're probably talking about that in their HR department. This has crept in. It's pushing them into arenas that they were never intending to go on their own, but they're being forced in there by this score and by pressure from the market. Second thing, Heritage Foundation takeaway, is that in reality, says what they are signaling is their dereliction of their fiduciary duty to those who have invested in their company. So basically what they're saying here is that, look, what this is really showing is it's showing that these companies, that these boards, these CEOs of investment companies that are governing these businesses, that they really don't have any interest in their fiduciary duty to their shareholders because they're going to more focus on their virtue signaling and ultimately their dereliction of duties. Last thing Heritage Foundation points out is the left's insatiable appetite for all things political. He says it should be met with a clear response by economic, freedom-loving people everywhere, not defeated. Look, the left is going to keep doing what the left does. They're going to push politics. They're going to push agendas. They're going to limit freedoms. And American people, people of faith, we have to look for every single opportunity that we can within the confines of the law to be able to push against this, to be able to fight back and to be able to ensure that the left does not dictate, change, and reset the American way of life. And ultimately for us as people of faith, our religious freedoms, your ability to worship God, your ability to believe what you believe. And I don't care if you're a Christian, if you're a Muslim, if you're a Buddhist, if you're Hindu, I believe that America is a place where you have religious freedom and no corporation should be forcing you to change your beliefs just so you can get a better stance in the marketplace. That's not a free market. That is a market that is being governed by socialism under the name of democratic socialism or under the name of ESG. Ultimately, it's a scam to push us further and further left. Where's this going to go? Ultimately, I hope that we're able to push back against this and we're able to see ESG standards removed from the marketplace, removed from the business world, especially in this country. But you know what? Not every nation has been able to successfully do that. And as we buy into it more and more, the risks for America become greater and greater. We just saw a nation, if you were paying attention to the news, in Sri Lanka that went through a major upheaval. I mean, did you see the people storming their capital? Did you see the people, you know, slamming against the gates, trying to get in? I mean, just droves of people. Why? Because they were fed up over lack of food, lack of energy. They were fed up over lack of basic services. Why? Because this, and you would think that this would be a nation that this is just tyranny. This is just, you know, this is just a nation that is not responsible at all. But you know what? Sri Lanka had a 98 out of 100 ESG score before this took place. I mean, according to ESG, it should be like one of the greatest places to live. I mean, this should be like, you know, are you going to go to, you know, Palm Springs? Are you going to go to Sri Lanka? What a choice. I mean, I don't know. But 98 out of 100, what happens? According to Alex Epstein, he tweets, Sri Lanka has received an ESG score of 98 out of 100. And Epstein is the author of the book, The Moral Case for Fossil Fuels. And he writes, ESG measures environmental goodness by how little humans impact Earth. So basically, ESG measures our environmental score, how good we are to planet Earth. It doesn't measure at all how good we are to the people on planet Earth. Because why? The left views people as parasites. The left views people as they're secondary. They don't matter. We just have to help mother Earth because she's the one that we really have to take care of. He goes on, he says, You can't take care of a nation. You can't take care of a people group without some sort of impact on planet Earth. Why? Because everything that we need for life comes from planet Earth. Food, clothing, housing, lumber, metals, all of these things, energy, all come from the Earth. So if we actually want to be able to take care of the people in our nation, if we want to create a marketplace and really a society where people can thrive and live, we have to give them certain allowances to be able to impact planet Earth. It doesn't mean we throw out conservation completely, but we have to give people the liberty to be able to do what they need to do to have a successful business and have their business focus on the thing that is really their area of specialty, what they are, what they set out to do in business and not just to chase after some sort of woke agenda in order to get a gold star from the government. He concludes here with ESG and the broader anti-impact movement are ultimately, he says, anti-human. So Sri Lanka is close to their ideal. Sri Lanka, they're 98% out of 100 ESG score. You know what? They pretty much hit their goal. They have showed that they are an anti-human movement and fortunately, the people are responding to this. But you know what? I don't want to wait until there's no more food in the grocery store to have to run down to the state house and tell them what we think about this. We need to be speaking out now so we never become a Sri Lanka, so we never get to that level. When you look at the chaos that ESG has caused in places like Sri Lanka and the havoc Chinese social credit scores has created in China, in communist China, it's obvious that places like these do not care for the best interests of their citizens. They are anti-human. Instead, they're chasing a score or a number of points that will supposedly save the environment, but it's at the detriment of human beings. After all, we're just parasites, right? You can hire and fire based upon skin color or even their latest tweet. While I wish I could say it will be different here in America, the odds are we're heading down the same dangerous path that these countries are on, a path that forces businesses and people to not only be woke, but to compromise their values that they hold dear and ultimately jeopardize the framework of society as we know it. No one should be forced to support woke ideologies, especially people of faith, and keep their businesses afloat or feed their families based upon this. Christians shouldn't have to worry about how to reconcile governmental requirements with what we're told to uphold in the Bible. That shouldn't be a tension that we have to balance. It's concerning, yes, but the good news is we aren't too far gone to turn this around. They may have started down this path. They may have started the great reset, but it's not fully taking place. We can still stop it. As Christians and citizens, we have to stay up to date on policies related to ESG, and we have to use every legal means necessary and every legal means available to us in order to fight back. Why? Because it's not, you know, today it might just be big corporations, but tomorrow it's going to be nonprofits. It's going to be people of faith. Look, I know that this is heavy, but I want you to know that I wouldn't be sharing this with you if I didn't think there was something we could still do about it. Thank you for joining me today on this important episode. I hope you'll be back next time with us for another episode of Church and State. As always, I'm your host, Lucas Miles, and remember, always stand strong and keep the faith. If I fade When I'm long and array Through wind and through trouble and pain If ever my heart strain Will you pull me through Like you always do When I am cold