Clifford Chance

Do Industry Climate Alliances Violate U.S. Antitrust Law?

December 5, 2022

After a meteoric rise in corporate, investor, and public attention, ESG faces a backlash from conservative politicians and regulators, especially in the United States. From its beginnings as a term for assessing an enterprise’s control over environmental, social, and governance factors, ESG has become a widely used but poorly-defined umbrella term encompassing a wide variety of environmental and social issues. As a result, ESG is now a target for those opposing “leftist politics” and the “woke agenda.” One argument has been that industry climate alliances violate US antitrust law.

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