Sal Nuzzo, Senior Fellow at the James Madison Institute and Executive Director of Consumer Defense, joined the Pelican Institute’s 2026 Solutions Summit to explain why ESG has become a major state-level fight. Nuzzo has spent years tracking how environmental, social, and governance rules spread through financial and regulatory systems. He said these rules often bypass voters and lawmakers, which creates real risks for markets.
Why ESG Became a State Issue
Nuzzo said ESG pressure grew during the Biden administration because states had to respond on their own. Federal agencies did not offer a clear path to challenge these rules. At the same time, groups in Europe and China pushed global standards that reached U.S. companies. Because of this, state regulators became the main arena for the debate.
He also said critics of ESG often get labeled as opponents of diversity or equity. Nuzzo pushed back on that idea. He said true diversity includes diversity of thought and background, not hiring quotas. When companies set race-based targets, he said it reduces people to check marks instead of individuals.
Energy Policy and the Net-Zero Push
Nuzzo also focused on the energy debate. He said replacing fossil fuels with wind and solar alone is not realistic. The country built more than a century of infrastructure around oil and gas, and no other system can fully replace it today. He pointed to a simple example: each wind turbine needs 400 gallons of crude oil every year for lubrication. With 75,000 turbines across the country, that adds up to about 30 million gallons each year. He said wind and solar can help support the grid, but only with heavy government subsidies.
A Taylor Swift Moment in Congress
Nuzzo closed with a lighter story. During a U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on Ticketmaster, he slipped a Taylor Swift lyric into his testimony. His line—“This is why we can’t have nice things”—went viral and earned him a playful “record” for the most Swift lyrics used in Senate testimony.