His book is not for the faint-hearted. It is technical in nature, utilizing extensive referenced data sources. He opens the book by explaining sustainability theory, discusses climate change, and describes the role the United Nations has played in promoting ESG in the financial sector. Tice explains how a sort of social control network has sprung up under the ESG banner, describes questionable ESG metrics and claims of its returns on investment, criticizes how it uses children and adolescents as “climate warriors” to influence the operations of financial institutions, and discusses how fiduciary duty is being reconfigured to incorporate ESG principles. He concludes the book with a chapter that offers what he cynically describes as ESG’s “race to zero.”

Stakeholder theory / Tice argues that “stakeholder capitalism” is a complimentary management theory of modern enterprise that undergirds the sustainability theory that makes up the “environmental” component (and primary focus) of ESG. Stakeholder capitalism argues that companies must serve all stakeholders—including employees, suppliers, customers, the state, and society at large—in contrast to the traditional shareholder model of the corporation. By extension, “society-at-large” (a catch-all phrase often found in definitions of stakeholder theory) brings legitimacy to the concept of “sustainability,” the idea that economic activities should be transformed so they can continue forever, avoiding “global warming and man-made climate change.” This idea underlies the book’s title, that human activity should have a “net zero” effect on the planet.

Milton Friedman recognized the “social responsibility” approach, i.e., the stakeholder approach, as a “fundamentally subversive doctrine” that would “thoroughly undermine the very foundations of our free society.” To reinforce Friedman’s perspective, Tice quotes Klaus Schwab, the founder of the World Economic Forum and supporter of the stakeholder capitalism model: “The wider economy, the state, and society expect that the company will contribute to the improvement of public well-being.”

In the spirit of Friedman, this reviewer argues that corporations, with their non-democratically elected CEOs and boards of directors, should not be substituting their decision-making for democratically elected representatives who are making public policy decisions for their constituency, and who are directly accountable to this electorate. These private sector organizations lack recognized legal authority and can be arguably accused of exercising authoritarian economic and political power with which they have not been formally vested.

Tice makes a cogent case against today’s widespread public embrace of ESG principles directly influencing investor financial and executive decision-making. What he has done—and better than anyone else up to now—is translate how the sustainability movement has gradually infiltrated the Wall Street investor mindset over the last two decades. He not only challenges the data and models supporting a correlation between manmade factors and climate change, but more importantly, he cogently explains the contrast between consensus established financial performance metrics versus academic and investment research based on amorphous and ever-changing ESG metrics encompassing a variety of ratings and scores. As Tice notes:

While ESG facilitators are making money, most investors are being pushed into the sustainability trade by moral arm-twisting rather than being motivated by the opportunity for attractive returns. By the time accounts realize that they have been duped, the regulators will have made sure that all of the exits are blocked and no one will be allowed to leave.

Tice excels at explaining how what started as ostensibly voluntary ESG principles and guidelines espoused by the United Nations—the Principles for Responsible Investment (PRI), established in 2006—have evolved into a prescriptive effort at sustainable finance in 2015, involving both climate change metrics and sustainable development goals. Likewise, the World Economic Forum has taken a lead role in championing the conversion from a fossil fuel–based to a “green energy” global economy, embracing various dates for the planet to achieve degrees of “fossil free” energy in the years 2030 to 2050. In conjunction with environmental and social justice groups, media efforts by these progressive nonprofits have successfully moved what were at one time voluntary ESG principles to required corporate orthodoxy by many US and Western companies and Wall Street financial institutions. US regulators, such as the Securities and Exchange Commission, recently introduced a legal requirement for ESG principles to be actively included in corporate policies and disclosure documents, as well as investment decisions. European governments are leading global sustainability policy through their active support of the 2015 Paris Agreement on climate change.

2030 exit plan / Tice recognizes that the ultimate goal of ESG advocates is to impose capital controls on financial markets, which would eventually deprive funding to companies mainly in the heavy industry sector of the US economy. This capital control would begin with oil and gas, leading to a scarcity of industrial and agricultural goods, higher transportation costs, unreliable electricity grids, and significantly increased prices for most goods (and services) that American consumers demand. Similar efforts in Europe have already produced dramatic energy price increases for European consumers. If America is not to follow Europe’s lead by 2030, Tice argues that “what is required now, first and foremost, is greater situational awareness on the part of the financial industry.” Moreover, he advocates for an anti-ESG movement in the United States to take a comprehensive political approach (his “exit plan”) to dismantling the climate change bureaucracy undergirding the ESG regulatory machine.

Specifically, Tice argues that the ESG resistance movement should adopt the same tactics that progressives have employed to achieve their environmental and social policy goals: exploiting the US judicial system to leverage the regulatory state. By “venue shopping” in the federal court system, anti-ESG plaintiffs successfully challenging federal regulations would return them to the legislature, effectively rendering them moot given the divided and dysfunctional nature of the US Congress. Tice’s “template” for a successful ESG regulatory pushback strategy is found in the US Supreme Court’s 2022 decision in West Virginia v. US Environmental Protection Agency, where the Court ruled 6–3 that the EPA did not have the authority to issue the 2015 Clean Power Plan (CPP) in the absence of clear congressional authority. Republican “red state” plaintiffs should now focus on the EPA’s 2009 Endangerment Finding, which labeled carbon dioxide a pollutant and provided legal justification for agency follow-on carbon regulations.

Tice writes that Republican state governors should also revisit the respective public utility portfolio standards, which require that an ever-increasing percentage of electricity generation come from renewable sources such as wind and solar, and have driven the power sector away from coal and natural gas (as well as nuclear) over the past two decades. The next elected Republican president should formally submit the Paris Agreement to the US Senate for approval. Because a treaty requires two-thirds supermajority approval to pass the Senate, this would effectively kill the agreement while establishing a legal precedent that would be difficult to reverse. Republican state attorneys general should also challenge the recently finalized Securities and Exchange Commission climate-focused ESG disclosure rules, arguing that, as with the EPA’s CPP rulemaking, these rules are not meant to simply improve disclosure and protect investors from fraud and deceptive practices, but rather are designed to influence major economic and political change by shifting capital from fossil fuel producers to green energy companies. The final ESG-related regulation to be legally challenged would be the Biden Labor Department rule allowing pension fund trustees under the Employment Retirement Income Security Act to consider climate and other ESG factors when reviewing risk and returns.

In addition, once economic injury can be proven, Tice argues that state complainants should bring a cause of action under existing federal antitrust law against those companies, banks, and investment firms that are now working in concert with ESG activists and enablers (and through membership groups) to shut down the oil and gas industry. Moreover, the anti-ESG movement should zero in on the banking sector to ensure a free flow of bank credit to fossil fuel companies, with state plaintiffs overlaying any antitrust action against specific boycotting banks that announce oil and gas lending bans. Legal actions should also be trained on third-party actors, including international nongovernmental organizations and nonprofit actors that have been applying ESG pressure to financial markets. Lastly, because the oil and gas industry is the prime target of climate change/​sustainability activists, the energy sector should establish the corporate example for ESG resistance by speaking out more vocally against climate change policy.

Conclusion / It cannot be understated how important this book is as an accessible, clarion call for the financial sector (and its customers) to recognize this “equivalency” among all stakeholders of the corporation and its projected long-term societal effects. The primacy of the corporation as an economic organization has been refocused to that of being “everything to everyone.” As Tice notes, this evolutionary change will eventually have cataclysmic consequences for the global financial system and its downstream customers.

While sometimes requiring a “cheat sheet” for acronym translation, the book is well written, focused, and provides a logical narrative that keeps a knowledgeable reader engaged. This reviewer notes that, as a professor in the strategic management field, the use of the “stakeholder management” concept is useful from a descriptive and instrumental perspective, but is not convincing from a normative perspective.

Tice’s ESG exit plan currently shows signs of being implemented. As a result of the Supreme Court’s 2023 affirmative action decision, a group of Republican state attorneys general wrote a letter to Fortune 500 companies warning them against race-based preferences in hiring and promotions. The Wall Street Journal found in its analysis that dozens of corporations altered descriptions of diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives in their 2023 annual reports. In addition, the Committee to Unleash Prosperity, which tracks major firms’ records on shareholder votes in its recent report (“Putting Politics Over Pensions”), found that support for ESG resolutions dropped 25 percent in 2023 from 2022, including a 30 percent reduction among the 25 most active fund families. Will that trend continue?