The Great Anti-ESG Backlash
11th March 2023
For more than thirty years, Scott Adams has captured the absurdity and humor of office life in his popular syndicated newspaper cartoon strip “Dilbert.” The title character, an oblong-headed, cubicle-dwelling everyman, is one of the most familiar cartoon characters in America, but last September he vanished from more than seventy newspapers.
Shortly before Dilbert’s partial disappearance, his opinionated creator had set his sights on ESG. Adams’s views on the vogue for “Ethical, Social and Corporate Governance” investment strategies weren’t exactly difficult to discern. In one strip, for example, Dilbert asks, “What is this ‘ESG’ thing I keep hearing about?” His sidekick Dogbert offers a definition: “Imagine if a crooked politician and a crooked financial advisor got married and had a baby.” “So… ESG would be that baby?” “Only if it is colicky and has firehose diarrhea.”
While Adams didn’t attribute the newspapers’ decision to drop the cartoon to his stance on ESG, he did pledge to “destroy ESG… or at least take a shot at it” shortly after the move. He is not alone; the ranks of the forces taking on ESG have been growing lately. They include investors, lawyers, regulators, climate change activists, energy companies, state treasurers, state legislators, congressmen, senators, 2024 presidential contenders — and now a cartoonist.
Now that Dilbert is no longer available in newspapers or online, it is still published daily on Scott Adams’ LOCALS channel, which is dirt cheap for what you get. Look for Coffee With Scott Adams.