ESG RIP: Review of Terrence Keeley’s "Sustainable"

Enter Terrence Keeley, author of Sustainable: Moving Beyond ESG to Impact Investing. Keeley’s intent is the mirror image of Marc Antony’s funeral oration, when he came to bury Caesar, not to praise him, and then proceeded to incite the people against Caesar’s assassins. Keeley’s praise for ESG is effusive and sincere. “ESG investing could well be the biggest thing in finance since the Dutch East India company issued shares in 1602,” Keeley writes. “ESG’s success or failure could literally impact every living creature on Earth.” He supports stakeholder capitalism, which, he says, appears uniquely suited to frame and help execute “this ambitious plan” to make the global economy more sustainable and inclusive, before concluding that, over the longer run, “stakeholder capitalism and shareholder capitalism appear broadly synonymous.”