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Hi there,

It’s the time of the year for New Year's resolutions, and one resolution for North Carolina’s government should be leaving ESG-directed policies behind in 2024.

Why?

Because Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) investing, driven by tempermental climate-focused regulations, causes real harm to North Carolina’s top industry: agriculture. ([link removed])

How so?

ESG prioritizes companies and projects that adhere to specific environmental, social and governance criteria, often influenced by ideologically-motivated factors that prioritize the preferences of “eco-elites” over the needs of the population.

So when applied to agriculture, ESG principles burden farmers with excessive costs and compliance requirements, with little respect to the unique challenges of agriculture.

One example is the push for farms to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. This push hurts small-to-midsize farms who can’t afford the equipment upgrades, energy transitions and compliance monitoring. This makes it cost-prohibitive for these farmers to update their technology to achieve the very environmental goals ESG activists claim they care about.

ESG mandates promote “one-size-fits-all” solutions and ignore the complexity and diversity of agriculture. For example, ESG mandates often divert capital from livestock farms because of their high-carbon activities. Instead, ESG mandates push renewable energy projects, like solar farms, at the expense of agricultural land. This raises costs for farmers by increasing the competition for arable land.

ESG also disrupts agricultural supply chains by imposing carbon-reduction targets, increasing the cost of moving goods, which is passed back to farmers and consumers.

Europe provides a cautionary tale for ESG agricultural policies. Aggressive climate policies in the Netherlands have driven many farmers to the brink of bankruptcy, with the possibly disastrous consequences of food shortages and economic collapse. This should serve as a warning for U.S. policymakers, that ESG regulations could lead to the same dire outcomes.

When farmers struggle, the entire economy feels the impact. Agriculture supports a vast network of industries, and ESG policies that harm farmers will have ripple effects throughout the ecosystem, driving up food prices and reducing economic activity.

The irony is that policies intended to promote social welfare would worsen economic inequality by making basic necessities unaffordable.

So what can North Carolina do? We can continue to limit public pensions using ESG criteria in their investment decisions, deny new contracts between state entities and financial institutions that use ESG criteria, and lobby Congress for federal reforms limiting ESG’s impact.

Truly supporting sustainability means ensuring our farmers have the resources and freedom to innovate, grow, and thrive.

You can read more here ([link removed]) , here ([link removed]) and here ([link removed]) .

Esse quam videri,

Brooke Medina
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More from Locke
1) 🇬🇧🇬🇧🇬🇧 The next Margaret Thatcher? ([link removed])
* That’s the recent title of an interview between Bari Weiss and the new leader of the United Kingdom’s Conservative Party, Kemi Badenoch
* For those who have followed British politics, we were intrigued by her maiden speech in the House of Commons ([link removed])
* While she may not have offered the full-throated defense of Britain’s classical liberal traditions, it was still a worthwhile interview
+ As she acknowledges, people are longing for meaning and moral clarity
+ Properly articulated, classical liberalism has offered that in the past, and can do so again
* So, is Kemi Badenoch the next Margaret Thatcher? That’s still TBD

You can read more here ([link removed]) .

2) 🙄🙄🙄 Another failed “economic incentive” deal ([link removed])
* A tech company that received an economic incentive deal cancelled the grant because they couldn’t create the jobs they promised they could…
+ This is yet another “economic incentive” deal that has failed to live up its promise
o Nearly half of grants awarded by the Job Development Investment Program (JDIG) have been terminated before job creation goals were reached
+ These deals are essentially a corporate welfare program, granting political privileges to certain businesses, at taxpayer expense
o Which opens the door for corruption, cronyism
o While failing to deliver on their promises
* Politicians love to announce “economic incentive” deals, but are nowhere to be found when the deals fail to live up to their promises
+ And even if they did live up to their job creation promises, some of our Locke Notes readers have shared their concerns about those jobs being ephemeral, and in some cases, not even going to North Carolinians
* North Carolina should get out of the incentive game, and instead treat all businesses the same, and let the best succeed, and not prop up the ones with the best lobbyists

You can get the full picture here ([link removed]) .

3) 🤓🤓🤓 Breaking down the Griffin campaign protests ([link removed])
* What are the six types of protests filed by Judge Jefferson Griffin’s campaign?
+ Deceased voters: 156 challenges
+ Non-registered voters: 572 challenges
+ Felon voters: 240 challenges
+ No ID for overseas voters: 1,409 challenges
+ Overseas voting by non-residents (FPCA): 266 challenges
+ Incomplete voter registration information: a whopping 60,273 challenges!
* What happens next?
+ The State Board of Elections divided these challenges into two groups:
o Empirical questions to be addressed by the county BoE
o Legal questions to be addressed by the state BoE
+ On December 11, the State Board rejected all three legal protests
o Of the 817 challenged votes, 315 had already been removed during the canvassing process (which occurred 10 days after the election)
o All of this is now contingent on future rulings
* Riggs continues to hold a lead
+ The only way Griffin can overcome Riggs’ current lead is if the court accepts:
o The “incomplete voter registration information” argument (representing 62,916 ballots)
o OR the “no ID for overseas voters” argument (representing 1,409 ballots)
+ There was also a challenge of 225,000 voter registrations before a federal court of appeals, but that was just remanded to the NC Supreme Court, and just today the state’s high court granted a stay to Griffin
+ This means the results of the NC Supreme Court election cannot be certified until this issue is resolved

You can get all the details here ([link removed]) and here ([link removed]) .

Donate ([link removed])

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