Profit is an afterthought for woke corporations

“He blasphemeth!” The world of banking and extraneous hordes of woke and politically correct enforcers were reduced to biblical outrage after Stuart Kirk, Head of Responsible Investment at HSBC Asset Management, suggested at a Financial Times event that the financial perils posed by climate change might have been exaggerated. Within minutes, the scribes and pharisees on Twitter were tearing their beards and rending their garments in derangement at the articulation of this heresy.

Kirk, naturally, has been suspended pending an investigation. Surely a banking executive of his seniority ought to have known that questioning, objective reasoning and – worst of all – debate, have no place in today’s financial system.

His kind of free-range thinking belongs to the dinosaur past of corporate finance, to the insensitive delusions promoted by dead white men such as Adam Smith or Milton Friedman. It almost suggests that the purpose of a financial institution is to make profits, rather than to socially engineer society.

As any company director with a soupçon of self-preservation instinct knows, it is impossible to exaggerate the dangers of climate change. Too often the world has ignored the warnings of informed sources, such as the BBC when it asserted the Arctic would be ice-free by 2015, or the Prince of Wales when he told us in 2009 that there were just 96 months left to save the planet, in 2019 that there were 18 months to secure the same goal, or, in 2020, when he graciously extended the period of grace to 10 years, possibly to accommodate a brief tenure of the throne on his part.

Why will the public not listen to such experts, purblindly focusing instead on side issues such as pandemic, war or the cost of living? Kirk’s description of climate change fanatics as “nut-jobs” came into the intolerable emperor’s-new-clothes category in which an undisciplined individual utters a universally known truth that it is transgressive to articulate. That applies especially in the corporate world.

Time was, financial institutions existed to create wealth. The challenge was to regulate them to a degree that would ensure they behaved ethically, without hobbling their ability to pursue legitimate profit creatively.

Today – and this may well be a portent of the demise of capitalism – the situation has become so inverted that many large institutions are dominated by the need to promote not just a “moral” agenda, but one that contradicts the morality of the majority of the population, and to advertise this allegiance in the most aggressive ways possible.

This process almost certainly began as a defensive exercise, virtue-signalling to the public in order to gain acceptance. Today, however, in many boardrooms, we are long past that stage. Directors have become so marinated in “woke” pieties they have come to believe them, or may have been imported onto the board for their woke credentials.

It is the HR department that determines the strategy of many firms, its all-pervasive outreach dramatically altering the character of the company. Environmental, social and governance (ESG) issues dominate corporate thinking and priorities to an extent that relegates profitability to an afterthought.

Beyond boardrooms and HR, in many firms, particularly in America, militantly woke employees dictate agendas to the CEO and executives: the tail is wagging the dog. This is compounded by institutional investors demanding climate mitigation and similar distractions be given priority in corporate policy. There are even small-fry activists who buy half a dozen shares to enable them to promote “progressive” views at AGMs.

In such a perfect storm of militant leftism, it is a small wonder that, in the face of Covid and its lingering supply-chain disruption, the Ukraine war, inflation, global food shortage and increasing financial chaos, many corporations may be heading for the rocks, ill-equipped to weather this hurricane.

Take climate change, the issue that has derailed Stuart Kirk, of HSBC. We have reached a point where, as he indicated, the lunatics have taken over the asylum. Try switching on BBC Radio 4 several times at random and count how many seconds elapse before you hear the words “climate change” being uttered. Whether the programme is nominally about cricket, economics or Minoan archaeology, the C-word will intrude relentlessly, like a kind of modified Tourette Syndrome whereby the broadcasters cannot help emitting the term. It is completely deranged, as is all discourse on climate.

The private sector is going down the same route. Access the websites of many fund managers and, amid the endless screeds about equity and diversity, environmental responsibility, ethical supply chains, human resources, etc., you may find yourself wondering whether these intensively focused social engineers have any time left for growing clients’ wealth.

The historical phenomenon we are witnessing is the far-left movement colloquially known as “woke”, but actually cultural Marxism, taking over the institutions and commanding heights of capitalism and diverting them to revolutionary purposes. At first, it was just a cynical exercise in camouflage by the corporate world; but now the appearance has become the reality.

We do not need teams of researchers to delve into this phenomenon and produce analysis or forecasts. A capitalist enterprise run by communists on communist principles will not thrive. That is a basic law of nature. The bottom line is that the future of humanity is more threatened by climate activism than by climate change. Yes, the climate is changing, as it has done every year since the earth was formed. Such change requires study and localised preparation for certain changes that will alter economic activity.

It is simply another factor to be taken into consideration by governments and corporations as they map out a strategy for the future. But, in the case of climate, that necessary exercise has been rendered virtually impossible to implement accurately, since dogmatic climate alarmism has poisoned all the wells. Dissident scientists, up to the status of Nobel laureate, have been silenced, deplatformed and cancelled. Every statistic or forecast, based on easily manipulated computer modelling, has been calibrated to support the most alarmist interpretations.

The loaded term “denier” has been imposed on anyone who questions the more extreme predictions. A torrent of propaganda has been unleashed on the public. Reliable, objective information about the true parameters of climatic change have become almost impossible to access. Our government has been half-panicked, half-flattered into embracing the ludicrous objective of “net zero” carbon emissions by 2050.

Yet the perfect storm of a pandemic, war, inflation and food scarcity compels us to plan frugally for the future and cut our coat according to our cloth. A net-zero commitment running into the dimension of trillions of pounds is incompatible with meeting these other threats. Inflation is not a computer model, it is a clear and present danger already roaring past 9 per cent. Russia’s plundering of grain in Ukraine and its destruction of the country’s agricultural infrastructure can be seen on satellite photography.

The world economy has never been subjected, in pre-globalisation times, to the stress test it is entering into now. We cannot even be certain that fiat currency will survive a severe meltdown. Yet “nut jobs” like Scottish Green leader Patrick Harvie warn us sententiously that the war in Ukraine must not be used to justify increased North Sea production. We are dealing with people who will not be content until we have regressed to a state of making fire by rubbing sticks together – and then they will take away the sticks, on environmental grounds.

It is tempting, seeing the rabbit-in-the-headlights paralysis of our corporate leaders and politicians in the face of what begins to look like an almost existential crisis, to wonder if our civilization simply became too precious and effete to survive. A more likely answer, however, is that that is true of the elites, but not of the bulk of the population. That in itself suggests the solution.

In October, the lumpen-populace will face a further increase of £800 on the energy cap and may be looking for an alternative use for lamp posts once the lights have gone out. Climate realists may be cancelled at the moment, but there is a bad time coming for the alarmists who have helped drive prosperous societies into a state of fuel poverty.