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The importance of environmental, social and governance performance in business has become the subject of growing skepticism and pushback. But recent research has come out squarely in favor of ESG as a decisive factor for both sustainability and profitability. 

More than 90 percent of S&P 500 companies currently publish ESG reports in some form, according to McKinsey. So do approximately 70 percent of Russell 1,000 companies. For these firms, ESG is considered part of the societal license to operate.

Yet there is concern about over-regulation inside the executive ranks of some corporations, according to a recent CNBC survey. Some chief financial officers (CFOs) said they do not see enough of a correlation between climate data and financial statements. Such skepticism may be what’s behind some of the recent corporate pushback against the upcoming Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) climate risk disclosure requirements. Reportedly, the SEC is considering revising a component of its climate disclosure rules.

The link between profitability and ESG performance is elusive but present

The Center for Sustainability and Excellence (CSE) conducts annual research which measures how ESG best practices and standards are affecting profitability and transparency. Its latest deep dive analyzed the practices and commitments of more than 310 Fortune 500 companies in North America and Europe — including 31 industry sectors — for the sixth consecutive year. The findings are worth considering, especially for those who remain skeptical of ESG.

While the research found no direct correlation between ESG practices and financial performance or absolute profit among the highest-ranked companies, there is evidence that applying ESG goals along with specific reporting frameworks and ratings results in better financial performance, according to CSE.

“Direct correlation is very hard to prove since there are so many different factors that affect profitability, including inflation,” Nikos Avlonas, president of CSE, explained in an interview with TriplePundit.

“For example, business models and leaders’ decisions on strategic issues are among several other factors that can affect profitability," he said. "However, it's known that intangible assets, including non-financial data, represents about 80 percent of the value of the business, and ESG criteria and data represents a very big portion of the 80 percent. So there is some kind of indirect correlation between financial performance and ESG practices, because these factors represent a very big portion of the value of the business.”

The leading companies and industries 

When it comes to ESG performance, the top 25 companies in CSE’s research are also among the most profitable in their sectors. These include General Mills, Prologis and Prudential Financial, which led the pack in the 10 sectors that came out on top: beverage and food consumer products, health and life insurance, and real estate.

A number of industries trailed behind, including diversified financials, food production, property and casual insurance, metals, and petroleum refining/energy. The leaders in these sectors were American Express, Alcoa, Marathon Petroleum, Newmont, Tyson Foods, AIG and Dominion Energy.

The other sector leaders were: Colgate-Palmolive, Lockheed Martin, S&P Global, Microsoft, Nike, Nvidia, Hilton Worldwide Holdings, Stanley Black & Decker, Starbucks, Truist Financial, Ford Motor, UPS, Edwards Lifesciences, 3M, Target, Cisco Systems, Jacobs Engineering Group, Walt Disney, eBay, Cigna and Regeneron Pharmaceuticals.

The standout ESG practices among leaders

All of the top performers had these three aspects in common, according to CSE. They averaged high consolidated ESG ratings, as demonstrated by MSCI, CDP, Sustainalytics and S&P Global. They used ESG-related standards — of which GRI, SASB and TCFD are good examples — and they incorporated stakeholder concerns and preferences into their strategies and reports. Finally, their ESG reporting was comprehensive, and they committed to ambitious medium- and long-term quantitative goals. Some 86 percent of top performers have published an accessible, independent sustainability or ESG report.

While adherents of ESG are finding that their businesses benefit in multiple ways, these firms are also looking at the growing investor trend that prioritizes companies with high ESG rankings. Global ESG assets are expected to hit $50 trillion by 2025.

A big push for decarbonization goals, less for transparency

CSE found that 29 percent of the surveyed companies had committed to decarbonization and 50 percent had set net-zero goals. But a lack of transparency in how companies planned to achieve those goals threatens to erode credibility in such ambitious targets.

Avlonas offered a clear recommendation for companies that want to lead in the ESG space: Report progress on climate action annually via the Science-Based Targets initiative, which encourages companies to set long-term targets in line with the latest climate science.

“Right now the Science-Based Targets are the best tool through which companies can demonstrate that they are truly committed to reducing their greenhouse gas emissions and becoming net zero,” he told 3p.

Third-party assurance makes a difference

CSE’s research also found that only 30 percent of companies used third-party assurance for their ESG reporting. So while there might be transparency of data, there is no external verification.

“We get two main reasons from sustainability professionals about why this number is low,” Avlonas explained. "The first is a lack of understanding of the importance of external assurance from C-suite executives. The second is the unjustified high fee from the Big Four accounting firms.”

However, “investing in third-party assurance does provide more points in ESG rankings and enhances credibility,” he added.

While there may always be some skepticism around ESG, the initiative’s momentum seems unlikely to abate. What’s clear, Avlonas concluded, is that doing business in a more sustainable way is increasingly synonymous with doing good business overall.

“Companies we have seen that have not taken ESG seriously face some kind of risk in terms of branding, investors’ preference or in transforming at a time when business models need to be sustainable, he said. "Overall, we believe that doing 'business as usual' is no longer a valid option.”

Image credit: Simone Hutsch via Unsplash

Jane Fonda is adding her star power and activist clout to a last-ditch effort to sign a U.N. Ocean Treaty that would turn 30 percent of the world’s oceans into marine sanctuaries, where fishing is banned, by 2030. Fonda delivered 5.5 million signatures from 157 countries to United Nations negotiators last week, with a looming March 3 deadline in this fifth and final try to reach an agreement. 

Fonda didn’t mince her words in a news conference at the U.N. on Feb. 21: “Not even dogs poop in their own kennel because they know that the kennel provides security and a home for them. We’re pooping in our own kennel. We’re supposed to be so smart. We’re destroying things we don’t even understand.”

For Fonda, the issue evokes the same activist fervor that led to her Fire Drill Fridays rallies around climate activism. As she told reporters last week, growing up in Santa Monica, California, imparted a lifelong love for the ocean. She's gone scuba diving at the Great Barrier Reef in Australia, the Galápagos Islands in Ecuador, as well as in the Caribbean and other parts of the world.

“I’ve swum with some of the most magnificent creatures, and I know that they may very well be more intelligent than me,” Fonda said. “And I love them, and I think that we should all understand that we’re talking about saving the last great wild animals that are hunted for food.”

Delivering the petition along with Fonda was Anta Diouf, a community leader in Senegal representing fisherwomen and processors from the region. “We female fish processors and the fishing communities we belong to are facing real challenges because of fish resource scarcity," she said. "Fishermen who supply fish to us risk their lives at sea as a result of such scarcity. The ocean is a world heritage when it is protected,” asking negotiators to “conclude this treaty for the sake of protecting our oceans, lives and jobs.”

If signed, this would be the world’s first treaty on the ocean’s biological diversity, a series of talks set in motion with a 2018 agreement by world leaders to draft an internationally legally-binding agreement under the 1982 U.N. Convention on the Law of the Sea.

While there is growing global support for protecting the high seas, the major sticking point has been ensuring the ocean treaty has sufficient financing for not only establishing but also managing new marine protected areas (MPAs). An analysis by Blue Nature Alliance found that protection, management, and monitoring of MPAs covering 30 percent of the ocean could cost the global community up to $7 billion in establishment costs and slightly more than $1 billion in annual operating costs.

The financing issue stalled an earlier round of ocean treaty talks in August, along with differences among countries over sharing the proceeds of “marine genetic resources” that are used in pharmaceuticals and other industries.

The hope is that the tide will finally turn for oceans that are getting hotter, more acidic and less oxygen-rich, as the U.N.’s climate scientists have reported. Marine ecosystems face increasing threats from seaborne plastic waste, unsustainable fishing practices and other man-made stresses. 

Something has to give, and Fonda and the millions of global citizens giving their support to the U.N. Ocean Treaty are saying the time is now.

Image © Stephanie Keith / Greenpeace (press use only)

The collective power of small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) — defined as those employing less than 500 employees — is far greater than many may expect. Together SMEs make up 90 percent of businesses worldwide and affect the livelihoods of more than 2 billion people.

In Europe, SMEs reign supreme — accounting for 99 percent of all companies and 63 percent of business-related emissions across the EU. Business owners in Europe have faced incredible challenges in recent years — from the pandemic, to supply chain disruptions, to inflation and labor shortages. Creating and implementing a sustainability program is difficult work during normal times, but recent crises have compounded the challenges.

Together, SMEs could wield significant influence over their industries, including suppliers, vendors, customers and other stakeholders, as well as their neighborhoods. With the help of SME Climate Hub, a nonprofit global initiative empowering small- to medium-sized businesses to take climate action, Meta is working to help SMEs overcome barriers to creating more sustainable business operations, one company at a time. 

Harnessing Meta’s power of convening to help SMEs

“Meta has over 200 million businesses that use Meta platforms, so as a company we are uniquely positioned to help,” said Eoghan Griffin, Meta’s head of sustainability for Europe, the Middle East and Africa. “We have a brilliant convening power.” 

Traditionally, Meta has focused on enabling business, particularly SMEs, to navigate the digital transition — from e-commerce to social media to communications, Griffin said. “Recently we have been looking at how to support SMEs in the green transition, as well,” he continued. "We knew informally that small businesses are struggling with supply chain requirements of larger companies, the complexity in navigating terminology, and customer expectations. Their customers are asking for this.” 

To address these challenges, Meta collaborated with the SME Climate Hub to create the Meta Boost Guide to Green, a sustainability training program for SMEs in Europe. “Guide to Green was a huge success,” Griffin said, "and we heard from businesses loud and clear that they want more support and guidance.” 

The Guide to Green offers information to help businesses incorporate sustainability into their company operations, as well as ways to communicate their stories.

Many small businesses are already playing their part on climate action and are using Meta’s platforms to support their businesses. For example, family-run Hippersons Boatyard in Norfolk, U.K., is taking a leadership role in promoting climate action within the local community. The Sparrow family, who run Hippersons, is working with their neighbors to increase recycling and rewilding. On top of that, they are embedding climate action into their own business operations through efforts such using lower-carbon fuel alternatives and providing discounts for those who use the train to get to the site rather than driving.

Belfast-based local produce delivery service, Farm Next Door, is encouraging customers to switch to ethically-grown produce from local farmers through educational programming. They also host events that help customers understand the various steps involved in growing produce and the benefits of buying local. The company has found this to be a great tool for engaging with its customer base and encouraging them to buy from Farm Next Door.

Breaking down SME barriers to sustainability

In 2022, Meta partnered with Accenture to learn more about the barriers that SMEs face to implementing sustainability programs — and they came away with three high-level findings.

Making the business case. “First, there is a need to provide and boost the value case for this kind of work,” Griffin said. “We need to showcase success stories, provide funding and provide value. Demonstrating and enabling that value is a critical barrier.” 

Understanding how to take action. SMEs also need help in knowing what matters most. “The climate change landscape is rapidly evolving. There is an overload of information from external sources, and it mostly targets different kinds of businesses,” Griffin explained. "We need to cut through the noise to address what kinds of actions SMEs can take.” 

A big part of this is understanding what climate action looks like for smaller businesses with fewer resources, because it will look different than it does at a major multinational. “SMEs can’t do everything, nor should they have to do the same things as a big company that has a bigger footprint,” Griffin said. "However, SMEs can be massive drivers of change. They have a galvanizing and accelerating role and opportunity in their communities.” 

Keep it simple. “The third big challenge is that we need to make it massively easier to deliver these changes,” Griffin said. “COVID taught us that: With supply chain disruptions and the cost of living crisis, somehow we need to make [sustainability] a lot smoother and easier for them. It is not realistic for SMEs to spend four or six months to put together sustainability plans, but Meta can get valuable, third-party content to as many businesses as possible.”

As part of its work in the EU, Meta is also looking to ensure that sustainability information is available in as many countries and cultural contexts as possible. Meta Boost Guide to Green is translated and available in the local language for some of the company’s EU markets. The training was also piloted with SMEs throughout Europe to ensure the programs were relevant for business owners across the region.

“Our flagship partner, SME Climate Hub, has been a critical partner in guiding us,” Griffin said. “They have a pledging tool, which allows businesses access to even more external validation. We don’t want to duplicate what other organizations are doing. We want to highlight the external resources, like SME Climate Hub, that are already available. Much of our guidance is highlighting the great work they are doing already.”

The collective impact of SMEs

Historically, SMEs have been underrepresented in many of the agencies and programs dedicated to reducing business emissions. “The U.N. and other agencies are focused on the emissions of large businesses, but collectively, SMEs have a huge impact, and they have been neglected in terms of support,” Griffin said. 

"That led us to creating this program,” he continued. "We aren’t a consulting firm, but we do think we have a brilliant convening factor and can get access to a lot of businesses at the same time. We are excited to support businesses in their journeys where we can.” 

While small businesses individually have small levels of greenhouse gas emissions, their collective action can help eliminate business sector emissions and galvanize communities. 

“No one is putting the blame on SMEs,” Griffin hastened to say. “As a large company, we have a huge focus on ourselves. However, collectively, SME emissions account for 63 percent of all business emissions in Europe. Sixty-six percent of customers want businesses to take a stand on climate, and SMEs have enormous reach in their communities. There is a huge opportunity there.”

And Griffin noted that when SMEs succeed, Meta also succeeds. “We are always keen to develop and deepen the relationships we have with SMEs, and there is a lot of shared social value within that,” he said. “Our training reached over 1 million SMEs, and in a climate crisis, we get to contribute to the drumbeat of stories that highlight how important this is and where the resources are.” 

Meta continues to partner with businesses of all sizes to help them establish communications plans and campaigns around their sustainability progress. “When a business is ready to communicate their stories, Meta is ready to help them do that,” Griffin concluded. “Those stories can lead to more brand loyalty. We can help translate the sustainability work that they’re doing into tangible business opportunities." 

This article series is sponsored by Meta and produced by the TriplePundit editorial team. 

Image credit: Ketut Subiyanto/Pexels

The world’s population surpassed the 8 billion mark in 2022. While it took over 200,000 years for the human population to reach 1 billion, it only took another 219 years for that number to multiply eightfold. Naturally, feeding this exponentially growing population is becoming ever more challenging and therefore requires some creativity.

A global hunger crisis of unprecedented proportions is plaguing the Earth, according to the United Nations’ World Food Program, where close to 345 million people in 82 countries face or risk facing acute food insecurity. Other figures on world hunger estimate that close to 700 million people suffer from severe food insecurity. 

To tackle the issue, tech innovation leaders developed new technologies and practices to boost crop yields, allowing more produce and food products to reach global markets. Consequently, agriculture has become the second-largest contributor to global greenhouse gas emissions, generating around 19 percent to 28 percent of all emissions. 

Modern agriculture takes a heavy environmental toll

While modern technology helps farmers boost crop yields, produce more meat on less land, and maximize efficiency overall, many technological advances in agriculture were developed without sustainability in mind. High-intensity, chemical-dependent farming damages soil quality and keeps synthetic fertilizers harming the environment, helping to produce more food while the soil keeps deteriorating.  

From a short-term business perspective, intensive farming makes sense because it makes efficient use of smaller amounts of land, thus providing greater quantities of food products to feed the growing number of hungry mouths. But the long-term potential damage to soil threatens a farm’s ability to maintain the necessary output. It’s also detrimental to the environment through its use of pesticides and fertilizers on crops fed to animals. As a result, portions of fertilizers inevitably end up being washed away into waterways — which can create dead zones that kill aquatic life, damaging another important food source.

Most farms today employ intensive farming techniques with both crops and livestock. The quest to meet the world’s rapidly growing demand for food, and in particular products like beef, has led to widespread deforestation. Between 1991 and 2005, approximately 70 percent of the Amazon basin’s deforested terrain was cleared out to make arable land for cattle ranches. 

As the human population will inevitably continue to grow, finding a solution that addresses the real and devastating cost of food insecurity while protecting our precious environment is a must. 

Nature as a role model

Historically, the best agriculture solutions that boost food production while having a positive environmental impact are developed by companies that turned to nature for inspiration. And by looking to nature, companies should be able to collaborate with public-sector initiatives, which provide much-needed capital to fund research centers and subsidies for innovative agricultural activities. 

In general, the concept of integrated pest management (IPM), when combined with sustainable agriculture, relies on biological and cultural control. Farmers already use predators like ladybugs to kill aphids, and poultry to consume pests, their larvae and eggs. There is no reason why new technologies created for agriculture can’t do the same. 

In fact, there’s a precedent for this strategy dating back to the 1960s. Koppert produced and implemented insects for environmentally-friendly pest control solutions in 1967, enabling farmers to work in a safer environment and sustainably produce healthier and higher quality crops. Replicating processes like this on a global scale needs to be on the agendas of governments, food product companies and farming associations. Collaboration on this front offers the best hope to both protect the environment and feed our planet’s growing and disenfranchised population. 

The same ethos should be applied to livestock farming, where the objective should be to find sustainable and resilient methods that treat animals humanely while still supporting the farm’s profitability. By rotating cattle grazing pastures on a near daily basis, the organic matter levels in the soil will increase, capturing and storing more carbon dioxide and potentially mitigating greenhouse gas emissions. This sustainable grazing system turns cows, a primary emissions contributor, into a tool for climate preservation. 

In the past, achieving one objective — environmental sustainability and eliminating food insecurity — involved contradicting the other. When looking to nature, finding creative alternatives allows for the best of both worlds. 

Agriculture is a complex industry that relies heavily on technology to meet the intense pressure of feeding a massive global population. But in its attempt to boost food production, tech fueled the industry’s carbon footprint. To meet the unprecedented environmental and social challenges ahead, we must look to nature as a role model to find ways to make agriculture sustainable and more efficient.

Image credit: Steven Weeks and Jonathan Kemper via Unsplash

For future tech leaders, soft skills like communication and problem-solving are in even greater demand than hard skills like coding, according to America Succeeds. With this in mind, the Autodesk Foundation launched its Tech Lead Development Program in March 2022 with 18 participants and a focus on the untapped potential of leadership soft skills.

The Autodesk Foundation is Autodesk’s charitable arm. There are 50 organizations in the foundation’s portfolio, most of which are concentrated in the areas of energy and materials, health and resilience, and work and prosperity. The foundation provides these organizations — which are made up of nonprofits and early-stage companies — with philanthropic investment and grants. The Tech Lead Development Program acts as an additional support service for the foundation’s portfolio. 

Christine Stoner, executive director of the Autodesk Foundation, told TriplePundit the program is aimed at building the skillsets necessary for a growth mindset. Participants learn to lead teams of individuals with diverse experiences and are equipped with the skills required to convey their learning and talk about themselves so that they can lead industries.

Nontechnical soft skills for leadership roles are highly sought-after

Stoner and her team made two key discoveries in the exploration and culmination of the Tech Lead Development Program. First, development initiatives in career advancement and leadership were an under-resourced area in nonprofits and early-stage organizations. In fact, the majority of the organizations supported by the foundation didn't have the resources to provide the level of career training needed. 

The second observation the team made was that the organizations faced challenges with retention and the development of nontechnical skills among technical leads, such as engineers and architects. “By focusing only on technical skill building, by focusing only on part of the equation where we think about leadership development, the more technical piece, we’re not tapping into the power skills or the non-technical or what we might refer to them as soft skills — which are, frankly, equally if not more important as we think about the success of individuals long term,” Stoner said.

Organizations are aware of this skills gap, however. A recent study shows that the majority of nonprofit organizations are prioritizing recruitment and investing in development. The top three development priorities include advancing learning programs, expanding investments in leadership programs and executing high-performance talent programs.

Impact lies in educating and empowering others

“The other thing that makes our approach novel is that we don’t just write checks,” Stoner said. “We match the capital deployment with in-kind support, resources like software donation and technology training, and employee talent initiatives and programs like the Tech Lead Development Program.” 

The Foundation launched the program to gain a better understanding of how the foundation can support the organizations in its portfolio and scale their impact, Stoner said. 

“We care a lot about those short-term outputs of the program and the cohort — things like program completion rate, completion of a capstone project, which is the final culmination of the program,” she told us. “But really what is more interesting to us, we’re thinking about how we can see those individuals grow as leaders long-term and how the participation in the cohort can lead to longer-term outcomes.”

The Tech Lead Development Program has already had an impact on its participants. Sixty-six percent were able to take on more responsibilities and expand in their current roles within the first few months of completing the program, Stoner said.

Businesses can strengthen their competitive advantage and be better prepared for future demands by providing opportunities for tech leaders to better their soft skills. And, by supporting its workforce first, businesses can better serve customers as well. 

Image credit: Christina Morillo via Pexels

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is moving the Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund forward and making good on its recently renewed commitments to environmental and climate justice.

Created by the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022, the Fund aims to mobilize public and private capital to reduce emissions and combat air pollution across the U.S., with a focus on low-income and historically marginalized communities. 

As a first step, the Fund will host two grant competitions worth $27 billion, the EPA announced in its initial guidance last week. A $7 billion competition will award grants to 60 organizations providing clean technologies like community solar and energy storage within U.S. communities. A second will disburse $20 billion to anywhere from two to 15 nonprofit lenders, including community-based lenders and green banks that provide financial assistance for low- and zero-emission technologies in low-income communities. 

"The Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund will unlock historic investments to combat the climate crisis and deliver results for the American people, especially those who have too often been left behind," said EPA Administrator Michael S. Regan, the first Black man to head the agency, in a statement. “With $27 billion from President Biden’s investments in America, this program will mobilize billions more in private capital to reduce pollution and improve public health, all while lowering energy costs, increasing energy security, creating good-paying jobs and boosting economic prosperity in communities across the country.”

Those are pretty big words, but a host of environmental and climate justice advocates agree about the Fund's promise. "This is a huge step," Adam Kent, Sarah Dougherty and Douglass Sims of the Natural Resources Defense Council's People and Communities Program, wrote of the Fund in a blog. "It has the potential to not only improve lives, but ultimately transform ‘green’ investments into ‘mainstream’ investments by catalyzing far, far more than $27 billion of investments and building a more equitable clean energy future."

$27 billion and beyond: Mobilizing funds for climate justice in U.S. communities 

An estimated 1 out of every 25 premature deaths in the U.S. can be linked to air pollution — more than traffic accidents and shootings combined. People of color and low-income people are more likely to be exposed to high levels of air pollution and as such are at greater risk of premature death. These communities also face outsized impacts from climate change. 

Addressing environmental and climate justice issues like these is a key focus in President Joe Biden's plan to leverage federal funds to advance racial equity. Launched during Biden's first week in office, the Justice40 Initiative looks to direct 40 percent of the overall benefits of certain federal investments to disadvantaged communities that are underserved and overburdened by pollution.

The Fund will align with Justice40 and take things a step further. "Although the law requires that just over half of Fund investments target low-income and disadvantaged communities, EPA will aim to prioritize investments in these communities throughout the entire $27 billion program," report Kent, Dougherty and Sims of the NRDC. "This decision could transform how funding flows to underserved communities, and Fund investments can support critical, life-improving projects that otherwise would not have moved forward."

The $7 billion in grants for clean technologies has the potential to scale transformative solutions like community solar and energy storage that can decarbonize underserved communities while reducing the burden of air pollution. The idea is that a cash infusion from the EPA can help recipient organizations grow and deploy even more community-based projects in pursuit of climate justice, similarly to how a $456 million federal loan helped Tesla become the world's largest electric vehicle manufacturer. 

"These projects have the potential to create local benefits including savings on energy costs, reliability improvements, and improved air quality, as well as reducing climate pollution," said Heather McTeer Toney, vice president of community engagement for the Environmental Defense Fund, in a statement. 

Further, the EPA's decision to diversify its portfolio of nonprofit lenders — rather than investing in a single entity — will allow funds to reach more communities through institutions with proven track records of community-based and green lending. "This is a sound decision, as NRDC and many of our environmental justice and community-based partners have pushed EPA to select multiple recipients as a critical feature of Fund implementation," Kent, Dougherty and Sims wrote. 

The next step

Both grant competitions are expected to launch in early summer. Organizations will have two to three months to submit their applications, and the EPA plans to make awards by late September of next year. 

The architecture of the Fund is based on input from state, local and Tribal governments, community financing institutions, environmental justice organizations, industry groups, and labor and environmental finance experts, the EPA said — and advocates are calling on the agency to keep the engagement up as it moves to start disbursing grants. 

"This is a positive step toward making the just transition affordable and accessible to those most in need,” Jessica Garcia, climate finance policy analyst at Americans for Financial Reform Education Fund, said in a statement. “The EPA should continue collecting feedback from the directly impacted communities that this fund aims to serve and developing robust criteria for its applicants to achieve its dual directive of protecting communities from climate impacts and providing them financial tools to safeguard their future. ”

Image credit: KE ATLAS/Unsplash

Hundreds of New York Times correspondents raised awareness about allegedly slanted op-ed articles and biased reporting on transgender news at the nation’s “paper of record” last week. Their evidence is unlikely to sway editorial decisions at the Times. However, business leaders need to pay close attention to the warning signs of an eroding democracy and an authoritarian-style breakdown in human and civil rights. 

American citizens are under assault from within

A fresh spate of state laws aimed at repressing transgender individuals began to surge in the weeks following the failed insurrection of January 6, 2021. That was no coincidence. The legislative assault on transgender and other gender non-conforming persons is of a piece with the organized white supremacist movement that flooded a murderous mob into the halls of Congress, and they have not let up since.

To push back against the rise of ongoing violence against transgender and other non-conforming persons, last week an initial group of 200 current and former New York Times contributors wrote an open letter to Philip B. Corbett, the paper’s associate managing editor for standards, pointing out that the Times has played a role in fostering violence and repression.

“Plenty of reporters at the Times cover trans issues fairly,” they wrote on Feb. 15. “Their work is eclipsed, however, by what one journalist has calculated as over 15,000 words of front⁠-⁠page Times coverage debating the propriety of medical care for trans children published in the last eight months alone.”

The letter notes that such care has been accepted medical practice going back decades. By opening the field to debate, the Times undermines public confidence in established professional practices and scientific findings.

If that sounds familiar, it is. “Just asking questions” about settled science is the decades-long strategy of organized climate change denial groups, and this kind of fact-free lobbying is not confined to stakeholder groups and their media echo chamber. It has morphed into a partisan rage machine with far-reaching consequences that stretch up to and include the U.S. Supreme Court. Since January 6, 2021, the anti-science movement has taken the form of a vengeful child-protection blitz — banning abortion, banning books, banning drag performances, and banishing minority histories from classrooms.

From the pages of the Times to the halls of statehouses

The letter cites evidence that misreporting at the Times has been used to justify repressive state legislation. “The Times has in recent years treated gender diversity with an eerily familiar mix of pseudoscience and euphemistic, charged language, while publishing reporting on trans children that omits relevant information about its sources,” the authors charge.

“The natural destination of poor editorial judgment is the court of law,” they add, describing how the Arkansas state attorney general supported repressive new legislation by citing three Times articles: Emily Bazelon’s “The Battle Over Gender Therapy,” Azeen Ghorayshi’s “Doctors Debate Whether Trans Teens Need Therapy Before Hormones,” and an op-ed by Ross Douthat, who is also credited with coining the term “woke capitalism” and laying the groundwork for the anti-ESG movement. 

The Proud Boys Connection

The Times is not alone in its failure to recognize the link between the white supremacist movement and the violent repression of gender non-conformance and transgender people, including threats against children’s hospitals.

Though many corporations pledged to withhold donations to the 147 Republican members of Congress who voted in support of the insurrectionists on the evening of January 6, some later resumed giving directly or through political action committees. Many others never stopped.

Corporate leaders have also largely ignored the tightly wound thread that keeps spinning out from the events of January 6. The threat to American democracy did not end after the violent mob was finally chased from the building. Some of the very same groups accused of organizing the assault on the Capitol are still actively raising their profiles and building alliances, in part by targeting transgender persons, gender non-conforming people and drag performers. 

In particular, a group called the Proud Boys emerged in 2016 with a reputation for street brawling. Former President Donald Trump referenced them favorably during the 2020 presidential debates before a national audience, and they turned out in force at the Capitol building on January 6, 2021. Several members are currently facing trial on charges of seditious conspiracy.

The group’s deliberately silly name was a strategic choice, intended to support their guise as a harmless social club. However, researchers at the National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism were among those paying attention. Last year, the group published a research paper describing the Proud Boys as a group that is “deeply rooted in white nationalism and misogyny.”

The paper listed a total of 83 identified members and affiliates who were accused of “ideologically motivated crimes” as of last year. The total includes 54 Proud Boys charged with participating in the insurrection of January 6, 2021.

After January 6 and to this day, the Proud Boys have continued to show up in local communities to disrupt drag performances and threaten other LGBTQ+ events, agitating in support of repressive legislation.

Their ongoing influence was underscored last week in an article published by the Lawfare blog under the title, “The Long Descent to Insurrection.” It was written by Georgetown University Policy Counsel Jacob Glick, who also served as investigative counsel on the Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the U.S. Capitol, as well as the House Managers’ legal team during the second impeachment of Donald Trump.

As part of their role in the January 6 investigations, Glick’s team interviewed members of the Proud Boys, the Oath Keepers, and “other individuals associated with far-right extremist groups.”

“This evidence we collected should be a warning to the general public that the Jan. 6 assault is part of a broader threat of paramilitary violence and its intersection with electoral politics, which began long before the day of the insurrection and has endured far after it was quelled,” he wrote.

As of this writing, the Times has not replied directly to the correspondents’ letter, though it defended itself against more general charges raised in a group letter produced by GLAAD and signed by more than 100 advocacy organizations.

Business leaders who profess to take diversity and ESG (environmental, social and governance) principles seriously need to recognize that the confluence of religious extremism, misogyny, and white supremacy is rapidly stripping the veneer of science and reason from an enlightened society, propelling all of us — not just those most vulnerable — down the path of repression and authoritarianism. 

Image credit: Karollyne Hubert/Unsplash