Elon Musk lashed out against “phony social justice warriors” on Wednesday after Tesla was booted from a key stock index that tracks sustainable and socially conscious companies.
The mogul’s rage came after Tesla was removed from the S&P 500 ESG index, a list of companies that ratings agency S&P Global believes are making “meaningful and measurable sustainability-focused enhancements.” ESG stands for “environmental, social and governance.”
About $65 billion is indexed or benchmarked to the S&P ESG index, compared to more than $13 trillion for the overall S&P 500 — which includes Tesla — according to Barron’s.
Tesla were trading down 6.1% at $715.08 around mid-day on Wednesday.
In a blog post explaining the change, S&P cited accusations of racial discrimination and poor working conditions at Tesla’s California factory, as well as Tesla’s handling of federal investigations of crashes involving its autopilot feature.
“While Tesla may be playing its part in taking fuel-powered cars off the road, it has fallen behind its peers when examined through a wider ESG lens,” S&P Dow Jones Indices’ ESG chief Margaret Dorn wrote.
While the S&P 500 ESG index no longer includes the world’s largest producer of electric cars, it still contains companies like Apple and Amazon, as well as one of the world’s largest oil producers: Exxon-Mobil.
Musk ranted about the move and singled-out Exxon on Wednesday.
“Exxon is rated top ten best in world for environment, social & governance (ESG) by S&P 500, while Tesla didn’t make the list!” Musk wrote on Twitter. “ESG is a scam. It has been weaponized by phone social justice warriors.”
In a follow-up tweet, Musk accused S&P Global Ratings of having “lost their integrity.”
The mogul also posted a meme saying that ESG scores determine “how compliant your business is with the leftist agenda” with the caption “Despite Tesla doing more for the environment than any company ever!”
Musk has also ranted about ESG in the past.
“Stop the outrageous false ESG assessments, where Tesla gets a bad grade, but an oil company can get a good grade,” Musk wrote earlier in May. “Total gaming of the system!”
[Written in collaboration with other media outlets with information from the following sources]
