Spitballing

Today was the deadline for article ideas for the next ESG Magazine (I’ve written articles for the last two editions). After a few hours of research, here’s what I submitted:

1. You Get What You Pay For
   If the business world is going to move toward a 2-degree-compliant level of emissions, executive pay and bonuses must radically change. In many industries, CEOs and executives are incentivised to act in ways that increase emissions when the Paris Agreement requires the opposite.

2. Red Card for Fifa
   Are efforts to improve working conditions for migrant labourers bearing fruit in advance of 2018 Russia/2022 Qatar? (Interview ILO, Fifa)

3. Changing the world, one burger at a time
   McDonald’s made it onto Fortune’s Change the World list in 2016 due to a number of environmentally friendly moves, including cage free eggs. Has there been a ripple effect through the fast food industry? Are these moves a game changer in industrial agriculture? (Interview fast food trade association and ShareAction)

4. AGM season: Speak now or forever hold your peace
   Trump’s business-friendly agenda could include building a higher wall between shareholders and the companies they target with resolutions (higher ownership, longer tenure). Could ESG resolutions be a thing of the past? (Interview Sanford Lewis, ProxyMonitor)

5. The Bloomberg Report
   The Task Force on Climate-Related Financial Disclosure’s draft report is out for review. I would like to get opinions from a range of opinion makers.

One of the big things I take for granted is the freedom I have to write about things I’m interested in. At Vanguard, I was mildly interested in the risk retirees face of outliving their assets. We all face that, right? But it was hard to build a professional career out of drawdown ratios and tax-sensitive order of withdrawal from different account registrations. I found my way into some interesting assignments at Vanguard--the last thing I did was a video about the history of the financial advisor business within Vanguard (more interesting than it sounds). But the obstacles I had to overcome to do anything at Vanguard exhausted me. The freelance pieces are easy: I send them in, they get printed, I get a check. No weekly team meetings, no marketing managers, no communication project leads, no legal review, no political battles with sales, no dressing downs from my boss (the ultimate yes man) if I said the wrong thing to the wrong person. I miss nothing about that place (bar a few friends). Because I’m too isolated working in my little bedroom office, I forget how very lucky I am to be able to do work that interests me and that I think is important.
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