The Mail

The Birds and the Trees

I enjoyed Jerome Groopman’s review of “Parasites,” by Scott Gardner, Judy Diamond, and Gabor Racz, but was disappointed by his commentary on birds (Books, December 5th). He writes that, while trees offer birds shelter and protection, “birds, in most cases, don’t really benefit their hosts.” This may be true on the whole, but it ignores an important exception that readers should know about: insectivorous birds who mitigate the harm of tree-loving pests.

In 1994, the New York Times wrote about a groundbreaking study in Ecology which demonstrated the critical role that migratory North American songbirds play in keeping forest trees healthy. More recently, in an essay for Living Bird magazine, Çağan H. Şekercioğlu noted a number of studies that show how avian pest control can also increase crop yields in a variety of contexts, including apple orchards in the Netherlands, oil-palm plantations in Borneo, and coffee farms in Jamaica. In a world in which the relationship between agriculture and the environment is too often disastrously parasitic, such stories of healthy dependence are important to tell.

Claudia Egelhoff
West St. Paul, Minn.

Factoring In

As a partner in a consulting firm that specializes in analyzing E.S.G.—environmental, social, and governance factors—for investors, I read Sheelah Kolhatkar’s profile of Vivek Ramaswamy with particular interest (“Anti-Woke, Inc.,” December 19th). The widespread use of the term “E.S.G. investing” is, in my mind, misleading. At its core, E.S.G. is simply data. More specifically, it is data on a company’s material commitments to things like climate policy. E.S.G. disclosures by companies help address the shortcomings of traditional quantitative measures of corporate performance (i.e., fundamental financial and accounting metrics) by including additional metrics on nonfinancial data to tell a more complete story.

Increasing numbers of investors have started integrating E.S.G. data into the screening process involved in assessing possible investments. This is part of a larger shift in the business world which seeks to find a balance between stakeholder capitalism and the foundational principles of free-market capitalism. The recent enthusiasm for stakeholder capitalism is not, as Ramaswamy suggests, the “woke” death knell of American corporations—it’s the pursuit of a multidimensional and financially sustainable approach to business. Defining, assessing, measuring, and reporting on relevant E.S.G. data helps investors gain a better understanding of a company’s long-term business strategy—and long-term profitability—in a period of considerable societal upheaval.

Anuj A. Shah
Cambridge, Mass.

Schmear Campaign

Johanna Fateman’s review of an exhibition about Jewish delicatessens mentions two Lower East Side shops: Katz’s, “believed to be the oldest continuously operating deli in the country,” and “its competitor, Russ & Daughters” (Goings On About Town, December 19th). These are, indeed, formidable institutions, but they do not compete. Aside from an occasional pickle, there are barely any common food items between them, in accordance with my tribe’s adherence, more or less, to the Talmudic injunction against mixing dairy and meat products. Russ & Daughters deals in the former, whereas Katz’s focusses extravagantly on the latter.

Alan Gotthelf
New York City

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