A headline crossed my desk that instantly caught my attention. I opened it in hopes that the leader of the largest asset manager in the world had come to his senses and realized his evil plans of forcing “Environment, Social, and Governance” (ESG) policies and investments were going to destroy capitalism, so he reversed course.
My hopes were quickly shattered when I read “BlackRock CEO: Never Mind About ESG” by Daniel Greenfield, copied below.
As it turned out, BlackRock CEO Larry Fink isn’t disavowing ESG. He’s disavowing their destructive corporate ideology’s name. He doesn’t want to call it “ESG” anymore because of the negative connotation that has permeated across the financial world.
My hopes went from tentatively high to very, very low by the time I was halfway done with the article. By declaring that he’s changing the label, it tells us they have no intention of reducing their pressure on corporations, governments, and financial advisors. They’re on the verge of ramping it all up.
This is essentially the beginning of a rebrand for Fink, BlackRock, and the vast army of financial advisors they own. They intend to promote ESG by giving it a new name, perhaps shifting some of the focus away from “Environment” and “Social” into something less blatantly woke. He often refers to “conscientious capitalism” and “responsible investing,” which are code words for forced diversity and demands of corporations to participate in leftist causes. They’ve weaponized “Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion” (DEI) as well as “Corporate Equity Index” (CEI) to make the largest corporations on the planet bow to their demands. This is why companies like Anheuser-Busch, Disney, and Target continue down their woke paths despite unambiguous failures with their core businesses.
It may seem self-serving for me to note that this is push by Fink and others is among the biggest reasons I’m so bullish on physical precious metals, but it needs to be said. Their control over financial advisors and retirement portfolio managers means the life’s savings of millions of Americans are being improperly managed, focusing on ESG (or whatever their new name will be) even when such investments do financial harm. We strongly recommend these four America First precious metals companies that we have vetted out because none of them are woke.
With that said, here’s Greenfield’s article…
BlackRock CEO: Never Mind About ESG
“I’m ashamed of being part of this conversation”
Why are so many major companies going woke and stiffing shareholders? Because their biggest shareholders are massive funds that push wokeness under the guise of formulas like ESG.
In 2020, BlackRock CEO Larry Fink declared that the climate apocalypse was here and everyone needed to adapt.
A successful low-carbon transition will require a coordinated, international response from governments aligned with the goals of the Paris Agreement, including the adoption of carbon pricing globally, which we continue to endorse. Companies and investors have a meaningful role to play in accelerating the low-carbon transition. BlackRock does not see itself as a passive observer in the low-carbon transition. We believe we have a significant responsibility – as a provider of index funds, as a fiduciary, and as a member of society – to play a constructive role in the transition.
Where we have the greatest discretion – in portfolio construction, our active and alternatives platforms, and our approach to risk management – we will employ sustainability across our investment process. Where we serve index clients, we are improving access to sustainable investment options, and we are enhancing our stewardship to make sure that companies in which our clients are invested are managing these risks effectively.
“Stewardship”. What a nice way of saying, we’re going to make sure companies toe our political line.
Now, Larry is a little less enthusiastic about ESG.
BlackRock CEO Larry Fink said he’s no longer using the term “ESG” (environment, social and governance) because it is being politically “weaponized” and he’s “ashamed” to be part of the debate on the issue.
In a conversation at the Aspen Ideas Festival on Sunday, Fink acknowledged that Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’ decision to pull $2 billion in assets hurt his firm in 2022, but made clear last year was his company’s best with net flows of $200 billion from U.S. clients.
“I’m ashamed of being part of this conversation,” Fink said.
“When I write these [investment] letters, it was never meant to be a political statement. … They were written to identify longterm issues to our longterm investors,” he told the crowd.
Of course, that’s nonsense. The 2020 letter was pure uncut Colombian-grade advocacy. And one that was being implemented by force.
And even now, Larry is trying to have it both ways.
When pressed on the statement later in the conversation, Fink backtracked.
“I never said I was ashamed,” he said, incorrectly. “I’m not ashamed. I do believe in conscientious capitalism.”
“I’m not going to use the word ESG because it’s been misused by the far left and the far right,” he added.
So while Fink may not long want to use the E word, assume that the same agendas will be rebranded. Fink isn’t unhappy with ESG, but how people are making it look bad.
Fink’s latest dispatch deemphasizes ESG investing — increasingly a politically fraught topic — compared to his most recent annual letters. In fact, the term ESG does not appear anywhere in the letter.
The energy transition concerns are not raised until paragraph 18, and the word “climate” doesn’t appear until the eighth page of the lengthy letter. Even when it does, climate is only used five times.
A little fear is a good thing. BlackRock, like many woke mega-corps, is far too powerful, has too much influence, but now it’s sensing that it might be on the wrong side of a movement.
Bypass Big Tech Censors
Two Storms, One Harvest
Every food crisis in living memory has been a one-shock event. The 2008 price spike was a commodity bubble. The 2020 shortages were a logistics failure. The 2022 grain scare was a war on one exporter’s ports. Each time, the system bent, adjusted, and recovered, and each time the experts assured us afterward that global markets are simply too big and too diversified to fail.
What nobody in Washington seems eager to discuss is that 2026 is shaping up to be something the modern food system has never actually faced. Two independent shocks, one climatic and one geopolitical, are converging on the same harvest cycle at the same time. Not sequentially. Simultaneously.
Start with the weather. The Pacific Ocean is currently building toward what forecasters now openly call a record event. NOAA’s Climate Prediction Center puts the odds of at least a strong El Niño near 88 percent, with roughly two in three odds it reaches “very strong” status, the tier reserved for perhaps three or four events in the entire satellite era. Every major global model now projects a median peak in Super El Niño territory, and most of them project it exceeding the 2015-16 event, which until now held the modern record. Sea surface anomalies were already brushing the super threshold in mid-July, months before these events normally peak. The atmosphere has already shifted into El Niño mode, and the event is forecast to crest in late fall and early winter.
This is not about “climate change.” It’s about the standard cycles of weather, and the cycle we’re currently in is one that has likely devastated societies in the past. We’re better prepared as a society today, but not all Americans are equally prepared.
Serious households have started doing the quiet math on their own. Grocery bills tell part of the story, and the forecast maps tell the rest, which is why long-term food storage has moved from fringe hobby to mainstream line item in the family budget, with established suppliers like Heaven’s Harvest seeing demand from people who five years ago would have rolled their eyes at the idea. That instinct is not paranoia. It is pattern recognition, and the pattern is worth walking through carefully.
Editor’s Note: Heaven’s Harvest IS a sponsor, but the warnings of this article are real and would be written even if we didn’t have a survival food sponsor. With that said, those who take advantage of what they offer can use promo code “Patriot” for 15% off.
The Fertilizer Clock Is Already Running
While the Pacific warms, the second shock has been unfolding in the Strait of Hormuz. The conflict with Iran turned the world’s most important energy chokepoint into a contested waterway, and the consequences reach far beyond the gas pump. Roughly a third of global fertilizer trade moves through Hormuz, and the disruption sent urea prices up 86 percent year over year by March, with a 53 percent jump in a single month.
The World Bank projects energy prices rising about 24 percent in 2026 and fertilizer about 31 percent. By its own accounting, fertilizer prices ran 35 percent higher in the first five months of this year than the same period last year.
Here is the mechanism the nightly news will not explain. Fertilizer is not a grocery item. It is a time-delayed input. The nitrogen a farmer in Iowa or Punjab could not afford to apply this spring does not show up as a problem this spring. It shows up as a thinner harvest six to twelve months later.
The World Bank’s own food security brief concedes that the effects of reduced applications earlier this season “are likely to become visible only later in harvest outcomes.” Translate that from institutional language into plain English and it means this. The damage is already done, it is already in the ground, and we are simply waiting for it to arrive on the shelf.
Now check the calendar. Six to twelve months from the spring planting season lands us squarely in late 2026 and early 2027. Which is precisely when the strongest El Niño in the instrumental record is forecast to peak, bringing its signature droughts to Southeast Asia, Australia, southern Africa, northern Brazil, and South Asia, the very regions that grow the world’s rice, sugar, and oilseeds.
The World Bank warns openly that a strong El Niño “could disrupt multiple crop belts simultaneously” on top of the conflict-driven input costs. Their baseline projection assumes the Middle East disruptions ease by autumn. What in the last two years of Middle East history suggests that assumption is safe?
The System Has No Slack Left
The comfortable answer is that global markets always adjust. But adjustment requires slack, and the slack is gone. Global cereal production is expected to decline from last year’s records even before El Niño does its work. The UN World Food Programme, hardly a den of right-wing preppers, is calling this the most significant disruption to its supply chains since Covid and the invasion of Ukraine, and its supply chain director put the stakes bluntly.
Today’s supply chain challenges are tomorrow’s hunger crisis.
There is also a political dimension that markets cannot price. When food gets scarce, governments do not behave like economists. They behave like politicians. Export bans, hoarding mandates, and panic buying at the national level turned the modest rice shortfall of 2008 into a global crisis, and analysts are already warning that import-dependent nations are the first dominoes.
The 2015-16 Super El Niño, a far weaker event than what is now forecast, threw tens of millions into food stress across Africa and Asia. This one is projected to be stronger, and it arrives with fertilizer already rationed by price and shipping lanes already contested by missiles.
What Joseph Knew
Scripture does not treat preparation for lean years as faithlessness. It treats it as wisdom delivered in advance to those willing to act on it.
Behold, there come seven years of great plenty throughout all the land of Egypt: And there shall arise after them seven years of famine; and all the plenty shall be forgotten in the land of Egypt.
Joseph did not respond to that warning with a hashtag or a committee. He stored grain during the years of abundance, and when the famine came, Egypt stood while its neighbors begged. The lesson is not that famine is certain. It is that the time to prepare is precisely when preparation still looks optional.
Nobody who filled a pantry in a year of plenty has ever regretted it, and nobody standing in an empty aisle has ever been glad he waited for certainty.
None of this calls for panic, and panic is the enemy of sound judgment anyway. It calls for the same unglamorous prudence our grandparents considered ordinary. Keep some cash margin, know your local growers, and put real food in deep storage while it is cheap and available, because the entire arc of this story is that cheap and available is a closing window.
Families looking for a straightforward place to start can visit Heaven’s Harvest and use promo code Patriot for 15 percent off long-term storable food. The forecasts may yet soften, the strait may yet reopen, and we should pray they do. But hope is a fine thing to hold and a foolish thing to eat.
