Rhetoric: Texas Governor Greg Abbott touted Texas’s anti-responsible investing law as an important tool to help Texas industry.
- At the 2024 NAPE Summit in Houston, Gov. Abbott doubled down on his attacks against responsible investing, noting: “Here in Texas, we’re standing up by prohibiting public investment entities from doing business with companies that boycott the oil and gas industry.”
Reality: Governor Abbott’s war on responsible investing is backed by self-interested greedy CEOs and everyday Texans are left holding the bag.
- Governor Abbott has taken over $44 million in campaign contributions from greedy CEOs and wealthy donors at the helm of the oil and gas industries.
- Governor Abbott’s attacks on responsible investing have made the state less business friendly. Since 2021 when Governor Abbott signed legislation banning public contracts with businesses that engage in responsible investing, the state has been dubbed “bad for business.”
- Texas municipalities and their taxpayers are on the hook for Governor Abbott’s attacks on responsible investing. A recent analysis by the University of Pennsylvania Wharton School and the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago found that Texas municipalities will be paying $300 million to $500 million in additional interest because of the state’s anti-ESG law – and that’s just on the $31.8 billion borrowed in the first eight months after the law went into effect.
- Governor Abbott’s attacks on responsible investing are not supported by the facts. There is no coordinated boycott of the oil and gas industry by major financial institutions. Many of the institutions banned from doing business in Texas still invest in the oil and gas industries.
- The world’s largest banks are engaged in responsible investing because, according to Fortune 500 CEOs it is “good for business” and can “open up new markets. In 2023, the world’s largest banks made about $3 billion by underwriting bonds and providing loans for green projects, outearning fossil fuel projects for the second year in a row.”
- Across party lines Americans, including 70% of Republicans, do not support attacks on responsible investing.
