Comment by tfandango

ESG is tricky to talk about thanks to the politization of it. I work on some projects that involve ESG data and I have some thoughts. First there's LOTS of factors. If you bunch them all up into one number, it becomes meaningless as the article describes. I would think wiser minds would use this data to make investment decisions based on some specific risk, like hedging against some environmental disaster which may affect some companies more than others. Also, one thing I notice is that umbrella companies make ESG data complicated. Sometimes there will be data from a subsidiary but not the parent, how that all bubbles up is of note. Companies may use this to manipulate their scores. And quality of the data is important, it is based on research not any sort of testing or analytic model, so one must trust the researchers in this case (or not).