OPINION:
The news that President Trump is considering shutting down the National Center for Atmospheric Research sent shock waves through the climate activist ecosystem, but to many Americans, it was long overdue.
For years, taxpayer dollars have underwritten institutions that blur the line between objective science and political advocacy. The message from Mr. Trump is clear: The era of unquestioned climate orthodoxy is over.
While Washington debates the fate of NCAR, Wall Street tells a different story.
Despite repeated claims that the environmental, social and governance framework is “dead,” “defeated” or “on life support,” the truth is that ESG is not even mortally wounded. At best, it has suffered a flesh wound and is quietly regrouping under new branding, language and marketing tactics.
The data doesn’t lie.
In the United States alone, there are 236 ESG equity mutual funds and ETFs representing approximately $226 billion in assets under management. Looking specifically at ETFs, which provide the clearest growth data, 207 ESG-branded ETFs hold roughly $146 billion in assets under management. Over the past year, those assets grew by 14%, and critically, 5.3% of that growth was new money, not just market appreciation.
Let’s not lose sight of the fact that ESG is still a very profitable business (estimated at more than $200 billion of annual revenue) for its asset managers and research providers. They aren’t going to stop eating from the ESG trough.
After political pressure, state-level backlash and mounting scrutiny from conservative investors, the woke creators and supporters of ESG realized the brand had become toxic. So they did what any skilled political movement does when exposed: They rebranded. That’s not retreat; it’s expansion. Only the packaging has changed.
A decade ago, ESG went by another name: sustainable investing. The objective was the same. It was an investment approach that claimed to generate financial returns while promoting environmental, social and governance outcomes. In practice, it meant diverting shareholder capital toward ideological objectives that often had little to do with performance or fiduciary duty.
Today’s preferred euphemisms are “resilience” and “responsible investing.” Once again, “sustainable” diversity, equity and inclusion, increasingly politicized, is recast as representation, opportunity and belonging, accountability or transparency.
Now, “net zero” or “climate change” commitments are reframed as energy transition, carbon neutrality or climate resilience. These shifts in language reflect political sensitivities, but the underlying practices are firmly embedded in capital markets and corporate strategy.
Resilience has become the catchall term for climate-focused capital allocation. It appears alongside phrases such as “adaptation finance” and “transition finance,” all designed to obscure what’s really happening. ESG professionals are increasingly using resilience in marketing materials, pitch decks and fund prospectuses to avoid political scrutiny while continuing the same misallocation of resources.
Other buzzwords abound, including “energy transition,” “stakeholder value creation” and “climate risk management.” None refers to traditional financial risk in the sense most investors understand it. Instead, they reframe political and regulatory activism as inevitable market forces and then use it to justify steering capital in preferred directions.
The ideology underpinning ESG hasn’t been defeated; it has gone quiet. Proponents are lying low, waiting for the political environment to shift back in their favor. They understand that Mr. Trump, Republican attorneys general and skeptical state pension funds have created headwinds. Rather than confront those headwinds directly, they are embedding ESG deeper into institutional processes under softer language and broader mandates.
Again, the numbers tell the story. According to the US SIF Trends Report for 2025 to 2026, U.S. sustainable investing assets still total $6.6 trillion. That figure alone demolishes the idea that ESG is disappearing. Institutional investors continue to integrate ESG factors into capital allocation decisions, regardless of political pressure.
S&P Global identifies climate change, biodiversity loss and energy transition as top sustainability trends for 2025. It notes that companies are embedding these priorities into long-term “resilience strategies,” even amid geopolitical fragmentation. Morningstar highlights climate-transition investing, sustainable bonds, biodiversity finance and even artificial intelligence ethics as emerging ESG growth areas.
Mr. Trump is right to challenge institutions like NCAR and the ideological capture of publicly funded research, but conservatives would be making a grave mistake if they assume regulatory or rhetorical victories alone have ended ESG’s influence.
ESG does not live primarily in Washington. It lives globally, in institutional investors, compliance departments, proxy voting guidelines and risk committees, in language that sounds neutral, technocratic and inevitable.
If investors, policymakers and fiduciaries want to truly defeat ESG, they must follow the money, challenge the assumptions baked into “resilience” and demand that capital allocation return to one principle above all others: maximizing value for shareholders, not advancing political agendas.
ESG is not dead. It’s simply waiting for you to stop paying attention.
• Bill Flaig is co-founder of the American Conservative Values Fund.
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