ESG replaced "sustainability" and will be replaced by a new word when the business need to pretend again to care about it after the last "fail" to implement

It's not profitable anymore.

Was it ever profitable? Or just something firms were goaded into caring about when low interest rate money was up for grabs?

The Fidelity green tech fund I invested in outperformed the SP500 for several years. I had banked on a Biden presidency and it paid off.

On the contrary, management consulting companies are going to make a killing in EU next year as it becomes mandatory.

how so ?

Banks are still offering ESG products. EG "Cut your carbon emissions by x% and we'll shave a couple of basis points off your loan/swap."

Things like ESG if they don't add to the bottom line will get cut in business down-cycles.

The short term nature of our current economy and markets cause this.

what's esg?

"Environmental, social, and governance is shorthand for an investing principle that prioritizes environmental issues, social issues, and corporate governance. Investing with ESG considerations is sometimes referred to as responsible investing or, in more proactive cases, impact investing" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Environmental,_social,_and_gov...)

In the US, I think companies were just riding the political tides, along with Black Lives Matter and DEI initiatives, Hong Kong, COVID restrictions, unionizations, etc.

A lot of that was during the Trump years, when activism saw a widespread resurgence that bled into the workplace. Then the conservative backlash was strong and persistent and many companies backed off. Then the general public got tired of boycotting everything and pretty much stopped caring and that was that. Back to profit as usual.

(i) you may not be looking in the right places, there is significant time and attention being paid by corporates to create or demonstrate progress on their ESG efforts (ii) there’s a recent “greenhushing” phenomenon whereby corporates and others rename their sustainability or equity initiatives to avoid being a target of groups who blast ESG as “woke” etc

ESG was a ZIRP phenomenon.

EU made it mandatory right after the interest rates shot up. Nothing ZIRP about it.

Europe is so far behind the curve that they're mandating ESG at the same time the US is dropping it.

Europe has more social and communal values than the US.

Not for long.

Yeah, that's why they make us send money out of our companies to US management consulting firms.

There are always companies that want to try to squeeze more out of their workers, but that doesn't preclude political/cultural differences between the two areas. What is considered leftist in the US is generally right-of-center in the EU, especially where it concerns economics and social safety nets.

An older survey: https://www.pewresearch.org/global/2011/11/17/the-american-w...