Fair enough, but not only is a company pushing us towards renewable energy better than a company resisting that better in the abstract, the real issue is the specific companies that the ESG index kept while booting Tesla.
https://slate.com/technology/2016/12/exxon-mobil-is-the-wors... https://www.npr.org/2019/10/22/772241282/exxon-is-on-trial-a... https://www.vox.com/22429551/climate-change-crisis-exxonmobi...
The list goes on and on and on, and this isn't even taking into account all of their lawsuits from employees about inappropriate workplace things. Again, it's not that Tesla is some pristine company, but that it's extremely hypocritical for booting Tesla from a list but keeping at least one other company that is far worse in pretty much every way, and that's what really calls into question the legitimacy of the ESG ratings.
> [criticism about criticism about Tesla relying on oil-based roads] > Well I guess I'll like to evaluate from a systems thinking standpoint. N-order impacts are relevant.
Of course they are relevant, but dinging a company because they don't solve every tangential issue seems defeatist, and every ESG index company has at least as many ways in which they could theoretically do much more if we start connecting the dots to everything in the system they're a part of. So it's just back to the original point: the ESG scoring seems, at best, pretty inconsistent.
Meanwhile, Tesla and Musk have a very recent historical pattern of not caring about environmental regulations, with no indication of any change in belief or practice.
So one is at least putting up money to try to improve things, while the other DGAF about the environment if it gets in their way of their business.
https://tyt.com/stories/4vZLCHuQrYE4uKagy0oyMA/6qN1EZx2r1p7a...
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/jan/18/exxon-te...
https://www.cnbc.com/2022/04/28/california-subpoenas-exxon-f...
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/may/11/exxon-ad...
https://grist.org/beacon/did-exxon-know-about-plastics-too/
https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/us-labor-board-impou...
https://www.reuters.com/legal/litigation/mass-top-court-skep...
When a company has literally decades of bad behavior (including multiple instances of being caught and then promising to do better and then being caught lying about it), it's a little hard to immediately accept at face value their most recent good deeds (especially since even some of them are already looking shady).
True. Sounds like both of them.