(Bloomberg) The current maelstrom should be seen as “manna from heaven,’’ said Kiernan, co-founder of Invest Green, a Toronto-based firm that educates investors on sustainable investing. “It should ideally catalyze a big shakeout, an incursion on greenwashing and result in a smaller, leaner industry with much better clarity and quality.” The list of insiders discomfited…

(Forbes) Close on the heels of the climate disclosures for companies, the SEC has issued a much-needed proposal on standardizing ESG disclosures for ESG funds. I believe greenwashing is rampant in ESG funds as I have documented in academic papers with colleagues and in Forbes columns before. The DWS greenwashing scandal is potentially just the…

(The Financial Times) A group of renowned technologists has joined forces to urge US lawmakers to crack down on the burgeoning cryptocurrencies industry, marking the first concerted effort to counter well-financed lobbying by blockchain companies. Harvard lecturer Bruce Schneier, former Microsoft engineer Miguel de Icaza and principal engineer at Google Cloud Kelsey Hightower, are among…

(Barron’s) Emerging critiques of ESG are strongly grounded in the economic consequences of investors’ narrow focus on ESG priorities. For example, the cost of capital for activities frowned upon by ESG–like fossil fuel production–has significantly increased, contributing to inflation and undermining US energy security. Yet the concept of stakeholder capitalism is proving more durable. Sometimes…

(The New Yorker) The world’s biggest companies—and, indeed, any company or individual with cash in the bank—have been inadvertently fuelling the climate crisis. Such cash, left in banks and other financial institutions that lend to the fossil-fuel industry, builds pipelines and funds oil exploration and, in the process, produces truly immense amounts of carbon. The…

(Wired) What do Russian protesters have in common with Twitter users freaked out about Elon Musk reading their DMs and people worried about the criminalization of abortion? It would serve them all to be protected by a more robust set of design practices from companies developing technologies. Let’s back up. Last month, Russian police coerced…

(The New York Times) Around the world, many of the largest energy companies are expected to sell off more than $100 billion of oil fields and other polluting assets in an effort to cut their emissions and make progress toward their corporate climate goals. However, they frequently sell to buyers that disclose little about their…

(The Washington Post) She was 12 when he started demanding nude photos, saying she was pretty, that he was her friend. She believed, because they had connected on Snapchat, that her photos and videos would disappear. Now, at 16, she is leading a class-action lawsuit against an app that has become a mainstay of American…

(The New York Times) “Climate and sustainability is going to be the new computer science,” Mr. Doerr, who made his estimated $11.3 billion fortune investing in technology companies such as Slack, Google and Amazon, said in an interview. “This is what the young people want to work on with their lives, for all the right…

(Protocol) Salesforce just became the latest tech giant to commit to limiting the scope of its non-disclosure agreements, freeing workers up to talk about instances of harassment or discrimination they experience on the job. Salesforce and all California employers are already required to make these changes for workers in the state under California’s Silenced No…