Trian Fund Management CEO Nelson Peltz launched a widely publicized campaign to earn a seat on the Disney board of directors and address various corporate governance issues, but the longtime investor does not appear to have plans to reverse the company’s social and political activism.

Trian, which holds a stake in Disney worth approximately $900 million, noted that shares are currently trading near an eight-year low even as the company benefits from robust branding and intellectual property advantages. If he clinches a board seat, Peltz said he would confront poor succession planning for management, excessive compensation, and lackluster cost discipline.

“Disney has an incredible legacy as one of the leading and most successful consumer entertainment companies in the world, having built some of the most celebrated consumer brands and an unparalleled content portfolio that resonates with audiences of all ages across the globe,” Peltz said in a statement. “But in recent years, the company has lost its way resulting in a rapid deterioration in its financial performance from a consistent dividend-paying, high free cash flow generative business into a highly leveraged enterprise with reduced earnings power and weak free cash flow conversion.”

Missing from the announcement is any mention of Disney issuing public stances with respect to controversial social matters. The company opposed legislation in Florida last year that prohibits instruction about sexual orientation and gender identity for students between kindergarten and third grade, causing a loss of trust among some consumers. Around 33% of Americans view Disney in a positive light, according to a poll from NBC News, marking a significant decline from 77% approval recorded one year earlier in a survey commissioned by The Daily Wire.

A spokesperson for Trian declined to comment when The Daily Wire asked whether the company’s activist campaign will seek to remedy the alienation of Disney customers by executives’ involvement in political debates.

Among other concerning metrics, Disney has reported a significant slowdown in new domestic subscriptions for streaming service Disney+ after leaping into the fray of contentious social issues. The movies “Strange World” and “Lightyear,” both of which featured same-sex attraction and were nevertheless oriented toward young children, witnessed failures at the box office.

Strive Asset Management President Anson Frericks said in an interview with The Daily Wire that the shakeup at Disney would be “more successful” if Peltz works to reverse the activist trajectory of the entertainment conglomerate.

“Disney has a real cultural problem right now as their customer approval ratings have plummeted,” he said. “I think there’s a huge opportunity for Trian to put a philosophy into Disney that is focused on excellence, not wading into any political controversies that have continued to sink the trust consumers have with them.”

Trian is a proponent of the environmental, social, and corporate governance movement, also known as ESG. The investment philosophy contends that businesses have a moral imperative to leverage their power to promote racial diversity, decrease carbon emissions, and achieve other sociocultural objectives deemed desirable by management. Trian has encouraged a number of its portfolio companies to adopt various ESG initiatives.

Critics say the ESG movement prompts companies to shift focus away from the maximization of returns and toward activism that is often harmful to companies’ bottom lines. Frericks, whose asset management firm encourages companies to focus solely on profitability, added that cultural matters “should be handled by politicians and not necessarily by investment firms.”

“I do not think a lot of investors are aware of the risks posed by ESG. There is definitely an echo chamber in Wall Street,” he commented. “We hope that more firms will move away from ESG mandates that might satisfy folks in California and New York, but might not be in the best interest of states like Florida, Texas, or Ohio.”

Disclosure: The Daily Wire has announced plans for kids entertainment content.

A report from The United Nations encouraged policymakers around the world to plan for older populations with fewer younger workers.

Developed countries with a greater share of older people and developing countries with more young people will experience the “irreversible global trend” of population aging, according to a report from the organization. The number of people over 65 years old is expected to more than double over the next three decades, from around 760 million to over 1.6 billion, while the number of people over 80 years old is increasing at an even faster rate.

“This pattern began on a global scale around the middle of the twentieth century and is expected to intensify in the decades ahead,” the analysis explained. “Most of the more developed countries have experienced population ageing over several decades and are already in advanced stages of this process. By contrast, many developing countries face rapid transitions towards ageing societies.”

While nations in Europe and North America currently have the highest number of older people, nations in Africa and Western Asia are “expected to experience the fastest growth in the number of older people” over the next three decades. Dependency ratios, which chart the number of older people and children relative to the working-age populations upon which they depend, are projected to increase over the same horizon.

The UN therefore called upon governments to increase retirement ages and expand pension coverage while making investments in healthcare and education that permit older people to be more self-reliant and economically productive.

“Based on current global trends, future cohorts of working-age and older persons are likely to be healthier and better educated, and therefore more productive, compared to earlier cohorts,” the report continued. “Eliminating age-related discrimination and barriers to formal employment are other critical measures for older persons to make continued contributions.”

Several developed nations are facing overburdened pension systems as more individuals enter retirement age. Medicare Hospital Insurance in the United States is projected to be insolvent by 2028, while Social Security’s Old-Age and Survivors Insurance trust fund will deplete reserves by 2034, according to an analysis from the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget.

The UN forecasts that the human race will have 8.5 billion people by 2030 and 9.7 billion people by 2050 even as worldwide fertility rates reach their lowest levels since 1950. India will soon surpass China as the world’s most populous nation; the former maintains a fertility rate of 2.2 children per woman, while the latter has a fertility rate of 1.7 children per woman, according to data from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development.

Some commentators have rejected the conventional wisdom that the global population is expanding at an unsustainable rate. Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk called low birth rates “one of the biggest risks to civilization” and encouraged people to build families.

“So many people, including smart people, think that there are too many people in the world and think that the population is growing out of control,” he said. “It’s completely the opposite. Please look at the numbers. If people don’t have more children, civilization is going to crumble.”