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Comment by tehjoker | Hacker News Reader

If you read this carefully it isn't that these financiers have grown a conscience, it's that public protest and the possibility of government policy changes have made it risky to hold these securities.

These analysts wouldn't have a rigorous analysis that made sense in financial terms without the force of public pressure. These companies are just machines that respond to stimuli and have no thought of consequences.

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There may also be risk in future liability. Tobacco took a hit because they knew of risks but they continued to sell their products without warning customers. I have heard there is similar evidence for oil companies that knew of global warming long ago but have yet to warn their customers.

Indeed -- Exxon has known about climate change since at least 1977.

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/exxon-knew-about-...

Totally disagree. In fact, institutional investors have for a long time resisted ESG considérations, and those who have adopted sustainable or responsible investment guidelines do so after a pretty thorough analysis of the investment risk/return impacts - understanding full well the potential impact on returns and communicating the implications to their stakeholders (pensioners, plan members).

I'm not sure what you're saying sounds like a total disagreement, but could you link to a few that did take into account ESG? Oftentimes, I find that when there seem to be exceptions to the rule, on closer inspection, there is something important about them that makes clear why they were able to do it.

What’s really the difference between that and the action/response of an individual person to social pressure?

It's similar, it's just that groups (esp. those focused on resource accumulation) are less moral than individuals. Whereas individuals might have ethics, dreams, a different way of thinking about the world, companies are tightly constrained in how they act without a stick beating them.

For example, all these CEOs I'm sure know about climate change and might even feel despair about it (or believe we'll invent some carbon capture tech, or believe they'll be fine in a bunker in New Zealand because they're rich). However, imagine being a big executive that would have to make decisions contra the interests of their investors. The institutional pressures would make it near impossible, and if they resign in protest, they'll simply be replaced with an ideologically correct replacement.

So you can see, individual hopes and dreams are ground up by institutional mechanisms, making the comparison not very straight forward.

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