Australian iron ore billionaire Andrew Forrest has announced a $9.2 billion (US$6.1 billion) plan to “eliminate” his mining empire’s “fossil fuel risk profile.” Forrest announced his company’s “decarbonisation strategy” during a CEO roundtable on “Business leadership to rescue the Sustainable Development Goals” in New York City. The event was part of U.S. President Joe Biden’s…

TOKYO—Japan’s government ministries have made budget requests totaling $784 billion for the next fiscal year—their second-largest total to date, driven largely by the defense ministry’s request for a rise in spending to record levels. The combined total spending requests made for next year’s budget came to 110.05 trillion yen, the Finance Ministry said on Monday,…

Commentary With increasing attention being paid to the negative consequences of so-called environmental, social, and governance (ESG) investing—which means selecting clients’ investments based on political rather than financial criteria—many hoped BlackRock’s annual letter to CEOs would signal a shift away from activism and back toward fiduciary responsibility. Sadly, chairman and CEO Larry Fink’s letter offered…

Commentary The Glasgow climate conference represents a strategic defeat for the West, and for Britain in particular. Boris Johnson unleashed everything he could muster. The royal family hosted receptions for multibillionaires. The Foreign Office sent climate envoys around the world. Glasgow would show the world that Britain could outdo France’s performance six years ago at…

Commentary So far, the big message from the Glasgow climate conference is the role of finance in decarbonizing the global economy. It’s a dangerous development. In his speech to the twenty-sixth Conference of the Parties (COP26) last week, Britain’s Chancellor of the Exchequer, Rishi Sunak, pledged action to “rewire the entire financial system for Net Zero.” Finance…

Commentary Overturning the Trump ERISA rules is proving a lot harder than the White House supposed. Pity the Department of Labor. Tasked with undoing two Trump-era rules on the conduct of pension fiduciaries under the Employment Retirement Income Security Act (ERISA) and promoting the administration’s climate policies, the DOL finds itself between the rock of…

Commentary Price rises—they keep on coming. Even before the recent surge in energy prices, companies had been warning about inflationary pressures in their supply chains. At the end of June, General Mills reported that it was facing cost increases of 7 percent and that it was raising the price of most of its grocery products….

Commentary Two inexorable energy trends are underway in California: soaring electricity prices and ever-worsening reliability—and both trends bode ill for the state’s low- and middle-income consumers. Last week, the state’s grid operator, the California Independent System Operator, issued a “flex alert” that asked the state’s consumers to reduce their power use “to reduce stress on the grid and avoid…

Commentary By any standard, the London meeting of finance ministers of the Group of Seven leading Western economies a week before the G7 leaders’ summit was historic. By committing to transformative structural change to meet net-zero greenhouse gas targets and other environmental objectives, G7 finance ministers turned themselves into adjuncts of their environment ministries. Considerations…