Featured in the Washington Times

The news that President Trump is looking at shutting down the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) sent shockwaves through the climate activist ecosystem. To many Americans, it felt like long-overdue accountability. For years, taxpayer dollars have underwritten institutions that blur the line between objective science and political advocacy. The message from Trump is clear: the era of unquestioned climate orthodoxy is over.

But while Washington debates the fate of NCAR, Wall Street tells a very different story.

Despite repeated claims that ESG is “dead,” “defeated,” or “on life support,” the truth is far less comforting. ESG is not dead. It is not even mortally wounded. At best, it has suffered a flesh wound and is quietly regrouping under new branding, new language, and new marketing tactics.

The data makes that impossible to deny.

In the United States alone, there are currently 236 ESG equity mutual funds and ETFs, representing approximately $226 billion in assets under management. Looking specifically at ETFs, which provide the clearest growth data, 207 ESG-branded ETFs hold roughly $146 billion in AUM. Over the past year, those assets grew by 14 percent, and critically, 5.3 percent of that growth was new money, not just market appreciation.

Let’s not lose sight of the fact that ESG is still a very profitable business for the asset managers and research providers that manage and support it. Estimated at over $200 billion dollars of annual revenue. They aren’t going to stop eating from the ESG trough. This strong economic incentive to keep ESG alive should not be underestimated

That is not retreat. That is expansion. What has changed is not the ideology, but the packaging.

After political pressure, state-level backlash, and mounting scrutiny from conservative investors, the socialist woke liberal creators and supporters of ESG realized the brand had become toxic. So they did what any skilled political movement does when exposed. They rebranded.

A decade ago, ESG went by another name: sustainable investing. The objective remains the same. It is an investment approach that claims to generate financial returns while promoting environmental, social, and governance outcomes. In practice, it still means diverting shareholder capital toward ideological objectives that often have little to do with performance or fiduciary duty.

Today’s preferred euphemisms are “resilience, responsible investing and once again sustainable Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI), increasingly politicized, is recast as (D) representation, (E) opportunity, (I) belonging, accountability or transparency.  

Now “net zero” or “climate change” commitments are reframed as energy transition, carbon neutrality, or climate resilience. These shifts in language reflect political sensitivities, but the underlying practices remain firmly embedded in capital markets and corporate strategy.

Resilience has become the new catch-all term for climate-focused capital allocation. It appears alongside phrases like “adaptation finance” and “transition finance,” all designed to obscure what is really happening. ESG professionals are increasingly using resilience in marketing materials, pitch decks, and fund prospectuses to avoid political scrutiny while continuing the same misallocation of resources.

As the Wall Street Journal recently said earlier in the year: Don’t call it ESG. Call it resilience.

Other buzzwords abound such as “Energy transition” or “Stakeholder value creation” or “Climate risk management”.  None of them refer to traditional financial risk in the sense that most investors understand it. Instead, they reframe political and regulatory activism as inevitable market forces, then use that framing to justify steering capital in preferred directions.

The ideology that underpins ESG has not been defeated. It has gone quiet.

Proponents are lying low, waiting for the political environment to shift back in their favor. They understand that Trump, Republican attorneys general, and skeptical state pension funds have created headwinds. So rather than confront those headwinds directly, they are embedding ESG deeper into institutional processes under softer language and broader mandates.

And again, the numbers tell the story.

According to the latest US SIF Trends Report for 2025–2026, U.S. sustainable investing assets still total $6.6 trillion. That figure alone demolishes the idea that ESG is disappearing. Institutional investors continue to integrate ESG factors into capital allocation decisions, regardless of political pressure.

S&P Global identifies climate change, biodiversity loss, and energy transition as top sustainability trends for 2025, noting that companies are embedding these priorities into long-term “resilience strategies,” even amid geopolitical fragmentation. Morningstar highlights climate-transition investing, sustainable bonds, biodiversity finance, and even AI ethics as emerging ESG growth areas.

This is not a retreat. It is a movement adapting.

President Trump is right to challenge institutions like NCAR and the ideological capture of publicly funded research. But conservatives would be making a grave mistake if they assume regulatory or rhetorical victories alone have ended ESG’s influence.

ESG does not live primarily in Washington. It lives globally, in institutional investors, compliance departments, proxy voting guidelines, and risk committees.  It lives in language that sounds neutral, technocratic, and inevitable.

If investors, policymakers, and fiduciaries want to truly defeat ESG, they must follow the money, challenge the assumptions baked into “resilience,” and demand that capital allocation return to one principle above all others: maximizing value for shareholders, not advancing political agendas.

Because ESG is not dead.

It is simply waiting for you to stop paying attention.

Bill Flaig is the co-Founder of the American Conservative Values Fund (ACVF). ACVF is an actively-managed ETF with over $130M in AUM as of 12/17/25.

Learn more at www.InvestConservative.com

For a list of ACVF Fund holdings:  https://acvetfs.com/fund/acv-etf-fund-data/

The views expressed are those of the authors as of 12/17/25 and are subject to change without notice. These opinions are not intended to be a forecast of future events, a guarantee of results, or investment advice.