How Republican AGs Tanked a $3 Trillion Woke Climate Alliance

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A group of Republican state attorneys general sent a letter in May to a United Nations-backed climate coalition, the Net-Zero Insurance Alliance, warning that it could be in violation of U.S. antitrust laws. Within weeks, nearly half of the alliance’s members bolted, leaving the climate project in disarray.

The remarkable and swift collapse of a group whose members included the world’s top insurance companies—collectively holding over $3 trillion in assets—appeared to happen overnight. In reality, it was the result of a sustained, two-year legal battle led by Republican attorneys general across the United States who mounted one of the most effective challenges yet to the Environmental, Social and Corporate Governance (ESG) movement.

The turmoil at the Insurance Alliance followed investigations launched by state attorneys general into two other UN-backed industry coalitions, the Net Zero Asset Managers Initiative and the Net Zero Bankers Alliance. Those alliances, founded in 2020 and 2021 respectively, aim to "accelerate [the] transition to a net-zero emissions economy" by pushing members to reduce investments in, as well as loans and insurance coverage to, high-emissions industries.

Such a coordinated campaign raised legal issues because its published target requirements are specific and its members control large market shares of their industries, according to Peter Bisbee, the executive director of the Republican Attorneys General Association. "The major fault with everyone in these Net Zero groups is it became very calculative," he said. "You could see exactly what they were doing and how they were doing it, and a lot of companies were putting out very mathematical language of how they were going to achieve these targets."

In the May letter, 23 state attorneys general warned the Insurance Alliance that it could be in breach of federal antitrust laws and their state equivalents that prohibit "agreements among competitors to issue uniform pricing policies, conditions of sale, production quotas, or otherwise limit the identity of their customers if those agreements will ultimately raise prices."