Commentary: WEF’s favorite management consulting firm plans to use Al Gore’s surveillance satellite network to supercharge ESG

When I woke up this morning, I did not think I would be writing such a strange headline. But the year is 2023, and everything seems to be getting crazier and crazier. So here we go.

In June, A.T. Kearney, Inc. — a global management consulting firm — announced a partnership with Al Gore’s nonprofit, Climate TRACE. Along with its various management consulting services, A.T. Kearney boasts about its role in helping organizations “establish and implement decarbonization strategies.” This new partnership, according to A.T. Kearney, will use data gathered by Gore’s fleet of 300 satellites to help clients “better understand and act on their [greenhouse gas] emissions footprint.”

Climate TRACE is a nonprofit created with the sole purpose of tracking and identifying the sources of greenhouse gas emissions around the world. At the World Economic Forum’s 2022 Davos conference, climate activist and former Vice President Al Gore unveiled plans for the Climate Tracking Realtime Atmospheric Carbon Emissions project. “It’s a coalition of artificial intelligence, technology companies, NGOs, and universities, using data from 300 existing satellites from multiple countries, ground, sea, and air-based sensors and internet data streams to use machine learning to create algorithms for every single subsector of the economy,” said Gore during the Davos panel on greenwashing.

On its website, Climate TRACE reports the use of 300 satellites, 11,000 sensors, and help from more than 100 collaborating organizations to generate 60 terabytes of data. This data is analyzed using artificial intelligence to create a comprehensive global map of carbon dioxide emissions.

A.T. Kearney reports the partnership with Climate TRACE can help supercharge ESG efforts. “ESG programs are only as good as the data behind them,” warns A.T. Kearney in its article discussing the partnership. By utilizing the data from Climate TRACE, A.T. Kearney can help its clients understand the full picture of their carbon footprint and better navigate the “reporting requirements from governments and ESG investors.”

These statements, and others made by A.T. Kearney in the same article, should be music to the ears of those at the WEF. However, it shouldn’t come as a surprise considering A.T. Kearney has been a partner with the WEF since 1971. Since then, the two organizations have worked closely together on a number of projects. The firm produced three reports in tandem with the WEF and hosted a series of panels at the annual Davos event in 2019. So it should come as no shock that Gore, who serves on the WEF board of trustees, is now working with WEF ally A.T. Kearney on a project that will supercharge ESG – a focal point of the WEF’s vision of so-called “stakeholder capitalism.”

And this story doesn’t end here. A.T. Kearney has seemingly embarked on a journey to acquire various sources of data. In 2019, A.T. Kearney bought Cervello, a business analytics firm that specializes in data management. In November 2022, Kearney acquired OPTANO, a firm that uses AI solutions to help clients with supply chain planning. Most recently, A.T. Kearney purchased Silicon Foundry, an advisory firm that helps clients benefit from “access to the most cutting-edge new technologies.”

These actions above may seem arbitrary in a vacuum, but in the context of the future described in Glenn Beck’s new book, "Dark Future: Uncovering the Great Reset’s Terrifying Next Phase," it all starts to make more sense. With the partnership with Al Gore’s Climate TRACE and the acquisitions of these data and tech firms, A.T. Kearney is positioning itself to capitalize on the prospect of an ESG-driven stakeholder capitalism system promoted by the WEF.

Donald Kendal (dkendal@heartland.org) is a research fellow with the Socialism Research Center at the Heartland Institute.