Hey, Smarties, Kimberly here. Today we're bringing you an episode from the latest season of How We Survive, Marketplace's Climate Solutions podcast. This season, host Amy Scott and the team are digging into the rise of ESG, or environmental, social, and governance-based investing, and the right-wing backlash that followed. Their story begins in New York City,

not on Wall Street, but with faith-based investors. All right, here's the episode.

I want to confess something kind of embarrassing, which is when I first read Larry Fink's letter,

I thought, oh, wow, you know, are the big money firms going to save us?

Do you think I was naive?

I think a lot of people found a glimmer of hope in Larry Fink's letter addressing climate risk.

I'm talking to Kelly Mitchell. She runs an oil and gas watchdog group called Field Notes.

And that letter we're talking about was a big deal. It was January 2020.

And Larry Fink, the co-founder and head of Black Rock, a big investment firm, put out his annual letter to corporate CEOs.

This morning and the world's largest asset manager announcing the firm will make climate change a focus of all of its investment strategy.

These letters always made a splash. BlackRock invests trillions of dollars globally on behalf of individuals saving for retirement or their kids' college,

as well as corporations and governments. So companies that want some of that money pay attention

to what he says. And for several years, Kelly says, Fink had been increasingly raising the profile

of so-called ESG issues.

ESG stands for environment, social, and governance.

And at its heart, it's a series of tools that companies and investors can use to analyze risk.

I know it sounds wonky, but the idea is simple that issues like climate change or

labor conditions or boardroom diversity can have a material impact on a company's bottom line.

That January five years ago, Fink's letter focused on the E in ESG environment.

He said climate change had become a defining factor in companies' long-term prospects

and that BlackRock would invest its clients' money

and use its shareholder power to push for changes accordingly.

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