The Race to Zero - by Paul H Tice (Hardcover)

Book Synopsis

"Paul Tice delivers a body-blow to the predations of the ESG-industrial-complex."

--Mark P. Mills, Senior Fellow, Manhattan Institute

Over the past few years, so-called "sustainable investing"--a new practice based on the theory that environmental, social, and governance (or "ESG") factors should drive corporate policy and investment decisions--has swept across Wall Street. Spurred on by the United Nations, national governments, and financial regulators, and cheered on by academics, environmental activists, and the media, the ESG orthodoxy has received little public resistance as it has integrated itself into almost every corner of the financial sector. By 2030, the iron curtain of sustainability will have fully cast its shadow across Wall Street.

The Race to Zero provides a detailed rebuttal to the case for sustainable investing from the perspective of a long-time Wall Street analyst, investor, and latter-day finance professor. Sustainable investing does not aim to generate excess returns for investors or to further ethical goals such as improving society or saving the planet; rather, it seeks to seize control of the world's financial system in order to ensure that the allocation of capital and investments across markets is politically favorable to establishment interests.

By limiting financial market access, ESG is designed to create a compliant corporate sector to serve as both Greek chorus and funding source for the environmental and social causes championed by government and the elite class. Climate change is its driving force and priority goal, and its main targets are fossil fuel companies operating in the industrialized Western world. This book is designed to expose these truths in plain-spoken language--free of financial jargon--to reach the widest possible audience, including the silent majority on Wall Street that is now afraid to speak up about ESG.

Review Quotes

In The Race to Zero, Paul Tice offers a thorough and engaging analysis of how the Left is using ESG investing and climate hysteria to conceal its collectivist social and economic goals. It's a great read for anyone interested in understanding how this latest version of Socialism in Sheep's clothing could crater our economy and impoverish millions, as it is already well on the way to doing in Europe.

--Andy Puzder, Former CEO of CKE Restaurants, Inc., Senior Fellow for Business and Economic Freedom, The Heritage Foundation

ESG investing is a scam like no other, writes Paul Tice in The Race to Zero. Embraced by Wall Street as penance for the 2008 financial crisis, ESG is a viral delivery mechanism that supplants objective investment criteria with Chinese-style social credit scores. These supplanted criteria bring about a centrally planned global financial system, which allocates capital to favored industries while denying finance to blacklisted ones, especially America's oil and gas companies. Revived in its current form by the UN and the Davos-based World Economic Forum, Tice traces the dark lineage of stakeholder socialism back to the 1930s. While the battle against politicallymandated investing has been lost in Europe, Tice argues that America is the last remaining hope for markets and shows how the globalist sustainability agenda can be defeated. Indispensable.

--Rupert Darwall, Senior Fellow, RealClear Foundation, Author of Green Tyranny

In his new book The Race to Zero, Paul Tice has provided an incisive and much needed critique of the ESG cult/scam. If Charles Mackay's classic book Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds were to be published in the year 2041 rather than 1841, it would certainly include ESG, which will have joined the garbage heap of history by then, along with Medieval witch burnings, the Dutch Tulip mania, and other lamentable aberrations of mankind.

--William Happer, Cyrus Fogg Brackett Professor of Physics, Emeritus, Princeton University

Paul Tice delivers a body-blow to the predations of the ESG-industrial-complex. Despite the seriousness of the subject, it's an enjoyable read and details the perversions of what used to be called corporate responsibility and good citizenship. Tice documents the weaponization of the term 'sustainability' and warns that, left unchecked, 'the iron curtain of sustainability' will descend across all of Wall Street, impact the entire economy, and 'touch every American.

--Mark P. Mills, Senior Fellow, Manhattan Institute & author of The Cloud Revolution

Tice gives us a comprehensive and insightful insider's view of why the ESG approach is such a bad idea.

--Steven Koonin, NYU University Professor, Author of Unsettled