Elon Musk launched an unsparing attack on SP Global Ratings after Tesla was removed from the Environment, Social and Governance (ESG) 500 index. The index basically ranks companies and investments based on their sustainability and their compliance with the aforementioned standards and guides investors before their investment. 

Earlier this week, SP Global announced the removal of the most valuable car company from the sustainability list citing reasons such as auto-pilot crashes, alleged racial discrimination and poor working conditions. 

"A few of the factors contributing to its 2021 SP DJI ESG Score were a decline in criteria level scores related to Tesla’s (lack of) low carbon strategy and codes of business conduct", Maggie Dorn, senior director and head of ESG Indices, North America, at SP Dow Jones Indices wrote in a blog post as per Barron's. 

Elon Musk calls ESG a scam

Irked by Tesla's removal from the list, CEO Elon Musk called the ESG ratings a "scam" and said that "It has been weaponized by phony social justice warriors". He even underscored that oil company Exxon Mobil Corporation made it to the top ten in ESG and slammed the SP Global Ratings saying that it "has lost their integrity".

In a series of tweets, Musk said that political attacks on him "will escalate dramatically in coming months" adding that Tesla is doing more for the environment than any company ever did. 

Musk believes that Tesla does not get enough credit for its environmental efforts and that's the reason why he has not held back in confronting personalities such as Bill Gates and even US President Joe Biden. Recently, Musk's chat will Gates went viral wherein it was revealed that the latter had a half-billion-dollar-short position in Tesla Inc. In the capital market, "shorting" or "short selling" means selling a security at a given price and buying it again at a lower price. 

An enraged Musk reportedly told Gates to "get lost", saying that he would not take the latter's philanthropy on climate change seriously while he is eyeing profit over Tesla's loss. The Tesla boss has also criticised President Biden for not acknowledging his company's contribution towards creating over 50,000 jobs in the US.