To the BlackRock chief, war-related energy shortages actually will speed up the push to climate-friendly sources.
BlackRock leader Larry Fink has sounded a call to corporate America to commit itself to net zero—that is, eradicating its carbon footprint. They must eliminate greenhouse gas emissions by 2050, and provide concrete plans to do so now, he declared. If they don’t take those steps, they risk BlackRock dumping their stock, Fink warned. For the most part, companies are playing along with the chief of BlackRock, the largest asset manager on earth (assets: $10 trillion). Sure, some of this is greenwashing, where the environmental effort is mostly a public relations façade. A lot of managements are taking Fink seriously, however, to the dismay of the political right, which argues that tree-hugging virtue will lead to slimmer profits and hurt the economy. (This is a notion that some dispute, to say the least.) But now comes a global energy crisis, courtesy of the Russia-Ukraine war. Europe still seems to want Russian natural gas, despite the European Union’s joining in on sanctions against Vladimir Putin’s nation and his cronies.
