Good Monday morning.
While the political pushback to ESG continues to grow in the U.S., there was little sign in Davos last week that business leaders are pulling back on their commitments, particularly on climate. At our CEO dinner on Thursday night, Coca-Cola CEO James Quincey put it this way, and won applause from his fellow CEOs:
“If ESG becomes toxic as a phrase, which it basically has in the U.S., it doesn’t matter to me. I’m just going to stop saying ‘ESG.’ But the idea that for my basic product, I want to be water positive, I want to have a circular economy on my packaging, and I want to grow our business with less sugar—you can call it anything you like, but no one with common sense says those are bad ideas.
