BlackRock maybe I can maybe understand, but Vanguard is like the most straightforward boring investment company in the world. It's literally a shareholder co-op for passive investment funds. People have no idea what they are talking about.
https://www.google.com/maps/place/Vanguard/@40.0513614,-75.5...
BlackRock? Different story, but Vanguard? Comeon.
If they spent the same amount of time doing research as they do on concocting inane conspiracies and brainless explanations, they may actually be as smart as they think themselves to be.
For a fund to be passive, all you are saying is that you are following pre-set rules for that fund. And there are any number of investment products these companies make and offer that use any sort of pre-set criteria.
You can take a look at one of Vanguards (few) ESG index funds and their criteria are very clearly presented at the bottom of the page: https://investor.vanguard.com/investment-products/mutual-fun...
Eg, the components of the S&P 500 are selected by committee, but obviously SPY is passively managed.
You can have a passively managed fund that is designed to to track an index of companies with a certain ESG score, or to track an index as well as possible while excluding non-ESG components, for example.