Like soldiers from old spy movies, the agents of the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) under former Goldman Sachs big-wig Gary Gensler have, since, early 2022, been prepping to add more to their already burdensome and unconstitutional demands of publicly traded firms that they “show us your paperz.” The new demands are bundled under the cozy title, “Climate Disclosure Rules,” they assume a lot about the believability of the “anthropogenic climate change” narrative, they assume that the feds can claim harm and possibly pursue businesses for their emissions of purported “greenhouse gasses,” and they have as their basis the unmitigated disaster of assuming that the SEC is a constitutional commission, in the first place.
They also have been “halted.” But, like most political “stops” of their thuggish, metastatic plans, that’s temporary.
Naveen Athrappully reports for The Epoch Times:
“The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) paused the implementation of its climate disclosure requirements for companies as legal challenges against the rules are pending in a circuit court.”
We’ll get into the “rules” (that quaint masking word for “diktats and threats”) in a moment, but, first, let’s look at this “stay” of the so-called “rules.”
“In March, the SEC finalized a controversial rule requiring publicly traded companies to disclose any climate-related risks to their business. The SEC’s Final Rules also required some midsize and large firms to reveal how much CO2 is emitted from their operations. This led to several Republican states, companies, and business groups filing lawsuits against the regulations, asking for the SEC rule to be stayed. Two energy companies—Liberty Energy Inc. and Nomad Proppant Services LLC—sought an administrative stay on the rule, which was granted by the Fifth Circuit court on March 15.”
Athrappully also explains that other state-based opposition arose in the courts.
“Other legal challenges against the rule were filed at the Second, Sixth, Eighth, Eleventh, and D.C. Circuit courts. All the lawsuits, including the Fifth Circuit one, were consolidated into a single case, with the Eight Circuit set to hear the challenge.
On March 26, the Chamber of Commerce of the United States of America, the Texas Association of Business, and the Longview Chamber of Commerce filed a motion in the Eighth Circuit, seeking a stay of the SEC rules pending judicial review.”
And…
“On April 4, SEC Secretary Vanessa Countryman issued an order staying the agency’s climate rule requirements while litigation proceeded in the Eighth Circuit.”
How kind.
When the SEC gangsters announced their idea more than two years ago, their publicly promoted “rationale” was that they just wanted to know how the companies they “regulate” are preparing for “climate related” costs due to the oft-purported “mega-storms” and other bogeymen they keep in their rhetorical ammo box. They repeated the falsehood in a March 6 press release, claiming:
“The importance of climate-related disclosures for investors has grown as investors, companies, and the markets have recognized that climate-related risks can affect a company’s business and its current and longer-term financial performance and position.”
So, of course, if the SEC means the danger of weather-related risks, the answer to that already exists. It’s called INSURANCE and REINSURANCE. Insurance companies go to a great deal of trouble to have their actuaries figure out whether clients are at great risk or are ameliorating the risks by, say, locating away from avalanche zones, away from flood zones, and so on. The higher the risk, the higher the insurance costs, and the greater the incentive to GET AWAY FROM THE RISK.
Here, we can note that geniuses like the Obamas clearly are so concerned about mankind making the oceans rise (there is no clear evidence supporting such a claim) that they bought a big ol’ mansion right on the coast of Martha’s Vineyard, Massachusetts, and that, strangely, they and others have not relocated to higher ground to appropriately respond to said climate bogeyman.
We also can note that the claims of “human-caused polar cap ice depletion” are not substantiated, that there has not been a dramatic jump in powerful storms, as the scaremongers ceaselessly prophesized for the past three decades, and that, in fact, there is a lot of evidence that politically connected “scientists” have fudged a lot of their data.
But, of course, the SEC’s “we’re forcing these rules on you for your own good” motif is just a beard. Beneath that artifice, the beating heart of the “Climate Disclosure Rules” is a terrifyingly invasive unconstitutional demand for information from the companies that not only would breach the Fourth Amendment, it also would cost firms billions of dollars over the years.
It’s information about their “emissions.” And the so-called risks presented by their “emissions?”
Those will be government fines or carbon taxes.
As Harvard Law posted in 2022, the SEC wants the companies to gather and hand them three levels, or “scopes,” of info.
- “Scope 1 emissions” are direct GHG emissions from operations that are owned or controlled by the registrant. These might include emissions from registrant-owned or controlled machinery, vehicles or operations.
- “Scope 2 emissions” are indirect GHG emissions primarily resulting from the generation of energy purchased and consumed by the registrant. These emissions include purchased or acquired electricity, steam, heat, or cooling that is consumed by operations owned or controlled by a registrant.
- “Scope 3 emissions” are all indirect GHG emissions not otherwise included in a registrant’s Scope 2 emissions, which occur in the upstream and downstream activities of a registrant’s value chain. These emissions are a consequence of the registrant’s activities but are generated from sources that are neither owned nor controlled by the registrant. These might include emissions associated with the production and transportation of goods a registrant purchases from third parties, employee commuting or business travel, and the processing or use of the registrant’s products by third parties.
The SEC has “eased back” its orders, eliminating the “Scope 3” reporting mandate, but you can bet they will work it back into their “regulations” someday, if the court does not strike down the “reporting” requirement. And, of course, whether the upper “scopes” focus on “direct” or “indirect” emissions, it is not the place of the federal government or any political entity to force the private acquisition and release to the feds of this data.
Only real people can make claims of injury from so-called “greenhouse gas emissions” and then they can try to prove their claims in a tort suit, before a jury.
That will be hard to do, because so-called “greenhouse gases” such as carbon-dioxide and methane are utilized by the life-cycle of the planet.
The Epoch times’ Athrappully offers:
“Iowa Attorney General Brenna Bird, one of the Republican AGs that led 25 states to file lawsuits against the climate rules, called the SEC’s April 4 stay a ‘victory’ that ‘shuts down the most outrageous climate mandate for businesses since Biden took office.’”
And Athrappully adds:
“’The SEC’s job is to protect people from fraud. It has no business slapping companies with extremist climate mandates. We are making it clear that Biden has to follow the law like everyone else,’ she said. ‘By halting this mandate, we are protecting businesses from costly red tape, securing our supply chain, and defending family farms. Next, we are going to make this win permanent!”
That would be good, but Bird’s underlying assumption, that the SEC exists “to protect people from fraud” accepts the fraudulent predicate that the SEC is, in any way, constitutional, that its only manner of functioning – by taking tax money from us – is “protection,” and that made-up “costs” and “dangers” of “greenhouse gasses” really are costs and dangers.
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They might as well order reports of how many leprechauns work in each office, or the risks of leprechaun pipe-smoke entering the world “ecosystem.
Human endeavors among other humans can be cited if they go wrong, and the way to do that is to allow a real person to make a real claim for damages, not for a government to, Soviet-style, prohibit activity or suck money out of businesses, mafia-style.
Athrapully notes this in conclusion:
“In addition to Iowa, other states in the lawsuit are Alabama, Alaska, Arkansas, Georgia, Idaho, Indiana, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, New Hampshire, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Virginia, West Virginia, and Wyoming.”
Perhaps I’ll contact some of the AGs in those states and thank them.