The key to U.S. global leadership in environmental stewardship has been balancing high but achievable standards while bolstering economic growth. Unfortunately, this proven approach stands to be undermined by the Biden administration’s unrealistic policies and the pervasive environmental, social and governance, or ESG, movement.
ESG preaches a great deal about bettering the planet and attuning business goals to environmental ones. But at what cost? As our environmental achievements to date have made clear, Americans need not lean on this flawed framework to promote conservation.
A clean, vibrant environment can be maintained without restructuring the entire economy — namely, our gross domestic product — with net-zero decarbonization policies manifested through the “E” prong.
Clean energy projects such as solar, wind, and electric vehicles are touted as environmentally sound alternatives to current power sources and technologies. Nevertheless, they come with massive trade-offs.
Solar and wind are propped up by government subsidies and require vast tracts of land. Solar projects on productive agricultural land, for instance, have ruinous impacts on the environment on account of deforestation. Wind farms pose great threats to wildlife — onshore and offshore — and would be constructed, in the case of the proposed Lava Wind Project in southern Idaho, on land that will be severely altered by explosives containing toxic chemicals.