Did This Masked Family Signal the Start of ESG Investing?

Found this disconcerting image in a 1970 Merrill Lynch ad.

“People in parts of Japan wear respiratory masks just to walk the streets,” Merrill explains. "Many

keep them handy in London. In the United States, air pollutants spew out at the rate of two-thirds of a ton per person per year. And our waters have become vast cesspools.”

Merrill’s ad goes on to tout the opportunities offered by pollution-control stocks. ESG investing? Not exactly. The term was yet to be invented. Merrill was thinking profits, not social responsibility.

Fifty years later, happily, the air in U.S. cities is mostly breathable. Less happily, wearing masks in public is becoming the new normal.