As we look back in this ‘year in review’ at our most read blog posts in 2022, at a time when many have emerged from 2 years of permacrisis to the highs of a future where ESG opportunities are accelerating.

This blog is a microcosm of the issues we assist clients with daily in our own non-law and law practice. We are incredibly excited about the prospects for our clients to maximize the opportunities ESG presents with sustainable growth, many of which have been the subject of blog posts this year.

At a macro level, when we talk with clients and post about the world’s existential crises, we use “climate and inequality” to identify the breadth of interconnected risks that impact our planetary and human health. Climate represents the broader environmental issues, including air and water quality, and biodiversity loss, its own existential crisis; and inequality is a proxy for social conditions or behaviors, such as practices that marginalize people, unequal access to opportunities and resources, systemic racism, and gender discrimination.

That ESG, including the subset of climate change and hierarchically below that, GHG disclosure and reduction, may be the biggest business opportunity in history, waiting to be unlocked, has been the theme that recurs in our posts and will continue to pervade this blog.

ESG law is still new and emergent. The pace of change is breathtaking. Some have characterized this past year in ESG as tumultuous, but a recent poll of corporate leaders found most describe this as just growing pains, maybe better characterized as inflection points, in the huge market shift in the role of business in our society. ESG’s success makes ‘value over values’ business considerations a target in today’s hyper divisive political climate, but with ESG representing more than $35 Trillion in managed investing and growing exponentially, ESG itself is an engine of growth.

We are supremely confident that our business philosophy of “mitigating risk and maximizing opportunity through ESG” is right for this new era.

In 2023 this blog will continue providing strategic intelligence on ESG law, including critical insights into sustainability for the business community, .. NOT just for lawyers. Some of what we will write about does not exist, including, for example, proposed federal regulations. But most of our blog posts mirror ‘real’ issues that we address in our own non-law and law practice.

As we look for what will be the bleeding edge ESG trends of 2023 “with one eye on the past, one eye on the future” here is a Top 10 List, with apologies to David Letterman, of our most read blog posts in 2022, which compilation provides a year in review that is an eclectic mix of ESG matters as self-selected for reading by readers of the blog. In descending order these are the posts that had the most traffic:

• Maryland is the First State to Regulate Carbon
• Selling the Sun: Sale of a House with Solar Panels is Fraught with Peril
• UN Human Rights Assessment of Uyghurs by China Drives ESG  
• Net Zero Pledge Standards for Business Released at COP27
• 179D Tax Deduction made Bigger and Better
• You Should Comment on the SEC’s Transformative Proposed ESG Rule
• ESG is an Opportunity for Commercial Landlords
• Maryland’s New Corporate Diversity Law Violates the Equal Protection Clause
• Green Hushing versus Confidentiality
• Scope 4 GHG Emissions

Armed with the knowledge of what came before, there is no doubt that 2023 and beyond portend to be a period of both burgeoning ESG efforts and great economic prosperity. We look forward to providing a lawyer’s edge on how you can prosper from this new era in the coming days, weeks, and months.

We know that in 2023 many businesses will for the first time calculate their GHG emissions, in anticipation of reducing GHGs, and we will blog about not only how to go about that (including NET+ our proprietary GHG calculator), but also the risks and opportunities.

We are pleasantly pleased by the over the top response to our blog and the almost geometric number of new readers we have gained each week since our launch some 18 months ago. We know that may have more to do with ESG being such a new field of endeavor, that blogs like ours, are literally the best if not the only source of information on the topic. You can sign up in the right column of the home page of the blog for a once a week email alerting you to the topic of each new post.

Thank you so much for reading. And thank you for the impressive and compelling feedback you provide and your willingness to put up with our poor writing and typos in posts that are often hastily written in our effort to be timely.

While we acknowledge we do not have a crystal ball (.. okay Stuart keeps a Magic 8 ball on his desk), watch for our upcoming blog post on our prediction for “the hottest” ESG trend for 2023.

Again, thank you for reading. Best wishes in 2023!