Missouri State Treasurer Scott Fitzpatrick announced on Tuesday that the state had pulled $500 million worth of pension funds from BlackRock. The decision to sell BlackRock-managed funds came after a series of Missouri State Employees’ Retirement System’s (MOSERS) Board of Trustees meetings in which the board and Fitzpatrick targeted BlackRock. BlackRock was doomed from the start, as the board held a meeting whose agenda included a presentation on environmental, social, and governance (ESG) concerns featuring prominent critics of the investment strategy who—like Fitzpatrick—dismissed ESG as “a woke political agenda.”
The Sierra Club was downright puzzled by Fitzpatrick’s actions given the fact that, on the same day the treasurer made his announcement, BlackRock told the U.K. Parliament that it would continue investing in the fossil fuel industry. “BlackRock continues to be a major financier of fossil fuels, and it isn’t doing nearly enough to address the destructive impacts of its investments,” Sierra Club Missouri Chapter’s political director, Michael Berg, said in a statement. “At the end of the day, when states cut off financial firms to score political points, the real impact is felt by the taxpayers and retirees who bear the costs of these theatrics.”
Missouri now joins three other states—Louisiana, Texas, and West Virginia—taking aim at investment firms that do business with the environment in mind, or at least claim to care about climate change. BlackRock in particular has faced criticism from environmental groups and climate activists for not doing enough to divest from fossil fuel companies. The firm is among a group of major banks and institutions that will be absent from the U.N.’s major climate conference, COP27, next month. But just a whiff of interest in ESG goals was enough for Fitzpatrick to pull the plug.