Assessing a company’s performance based on its social responsibility rather than its balance sheet is no easy task.

Environmental, social and governance frameworks that source information from public databases and expert analyses put all the considerations into one equation.

The variables of life can make it challenging to produce a trustworthy output. But this difficulty and the recent Russian invasion of Ukraine should not cause individuals to denounce ESG as a “failed fad” (“Business cannot brush off ESG as a mere PR challenge”, Opinion, May 2).

For example, if the calorie had not been quantified by the respiration calorimeter in 1896, would it be “meaningless” to sustain a diet in a caloric deficit or caloric surplus today (“ISSB sets out to tighten up climate reporting”, Special Reports, FT.com, May 5)?

In the same vein, just because companies’ ESG-collected data do not come in a universally accepted unit of measure does not mean we should stray away from understanding its fundamental importance.

Though the social landscape may shift immensely, causing us to reprioritise ESG, one variable remains constant: capitalism with a conscience is here to stay, and rightfully so.

Martina Castellanos
New York, NY, US