THE CENTRALITY OF ESG: Capital's Reaction to Climate Crises

This article exposes the current rise of ESG (Environmental, Social and Governance) as a publicity symbol of the reaction promoted by capital to climate change. To qualify ESG as a symbol of capital in our time, the first part of the article takes the form of the symbolic construction of man based on the concepts of biosphere, noosphere and semiosphere of Edgard Morin (1975) and Yuri Lotman (1999), and on the construction of the semiotic experience based on the three Peircean categories. The growth in interest in ESG towards centrality in the semiosphere is demonstrated in the second part of the article by the recent increase in the volume of searches for the term in Brazil, according to the Google Trends tool. We compared the rise of ESG to the search in the country for other terms associated with climate change, such as "global warming" and "sustainability". We conclude that the fact that ESG is on the rise reflects that reacting to climate threats may be a delayed response by capital.