NICK POPE
CONTRIBUTOR
A coalition of red states announced Wednesday that they are challenging the Biden administration over its fresh corporate emissions and climate disclosure rule, just hours after the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) greenlit the measure.
The SEC moved Wednesday to finalize new rules legally requiring certain public companies to report climate-related risks to their businesses and disclose data on the greenhouse gas emissions that their business operations directly generate. A group of ten Republican state attorneys general are suing the Biden administration over the rule, arguing that it is an unconstitutional attempt to impose climate regulation through the back door using an agency that does not have much to do with climate-related rulemaking. (RELATED: Green Firm That Advised SEC On Proposed Emissions Rule Sold Carbon Credits From Chinese Region Known For Slave Labor)
The challenge was filed in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit, and is being co-led by Georgia Attorney General Christopher Carr and West Virginia Attorney General Patrick Morrissey. The attorneys general for Alabama, Alaska, Indiana, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Wyoming and Virginia are also involved in the suit.
The WV AG briefed the media today on a development involving the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. The AG is co-leading a coalition of 10 states in filing a petition for review in the U.S. Court Of Appeals for the 11th Circuit.
View playback: https://t.co/MF8Hwrk0aq
1/2 pic.twitter.com/r09DyeIh9u— WV Attorney General (@WestVirginiaAG) March 6, 2024
“While the administration and the SEC have made some changes to the proposed rule, what they have released today is still wildly in defect and illegal and unconstitutional, and that’s why we are taking the action that we are taking today,” Morrissey said during remarks announcing the suit. “We believe that we are going to proceed in court and prevail. Today, the Biden administration has once again gone on the attack against America’s energy industry. It actually may be one of their most egregious attempts yet, but this time, they’re not using the [Environmental Protection Agency] as their tool of choice.”
The final rule approved Wednesday is a weakened version of the SEC’s March 2022 proposal. Nevertheless, many opponents contend that it is still illegal or needlessly onerous, or both, while some critics from the left have criticized the SEC for dropping some of the most aggressive provisions included in the proposal.
The final rule mandates medium-sized and large companies to report emissions attributable to the electricity they use to power their business operations starting in fiscal years 2026 and 2028, respectively. The regulation will also require all public corporations to disclose climate-related risks to their business, just as they are required to disclose other material risks.
The rule also requires relevant companies to report their organizational climate goals, such as plans to ditch fossil fuels. The agency opted to make these requirements legally binding, meaning that corporations could be exposed to legal liability if they misreport their emissions.
The agency dropped a provision in the initial proposal that would have required certain public corporations to disclose the indirect emissions caused by their businesses, including those generated along supply chains and by the use of final products.
“The Commission undertakes rulemaking consistent with its authorities and laws governing the administrative process and will vigorously defend the final climate risk disclosure rules in court,” a spokesperson for the SEC told the Daily Caller News Foundation.
Editor’s note: This article has been updated to include comment from the SEC.
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Part of this needs to be a frontal assault on the notion that there is any “climate related risk,” with Exhibit A being that laundry list referenced by someone here right from the IPCC’s latest report of every imaginable type of “bad weather” that admits (in IPCC speak, they have ‘low confidence’) that none of such “bad weather” is becoming EITHER more frequent OR more severe.
So where’s the “climate risk?!”
And then add the recent study showing Atlantic tropical cyclone activity to be HIGHER during The Little Ice Age than it is today to underscore the FACT that a WARMER climate is BETTER, not WORSE.
There should NOT be one word that suggests any part of the “consensus” junk science is not subject to question.
Shop Owner: “No Clima-Change™ risks to us here, the whole issue is a crock, and any CO2 we emit here is a plant nutrient which the planet needs more of. You can learn more at the WUWT website among numerous others.”
Armed SEC squad leader: “We deem that to be disinformation. Here is a list of things you will say, and the penalty if you do not is that we will close down your business. Will you comply?“
That should be SEC Gauleiter and the message should be delivered in a thick German accent.
I used to deal with those schmucks for a living. They were a bad combination of arrogant and stupid.
So did I; also at various times during my legal career with the FCC, FTC, NLRB, and EEOC. Every one of them had those exact same characteristics dating back to the late 1980’s. I can only imagine how much more arrogant and stupid they have become since then, as there are never any consequences to the stupid and arrogant individuals who belch forth this garbage day in and day out.
That’s not going to happen. Courts don’t care if there is a risk and neither do regulatory agencies. What matters is the law; the authority to regulate. In this case, they have none but that doesn’t stop them from trying. Congress hasn’t passed any law to regulate “greenhouse gases” and the Executive branch can’t make laws. Only Congress can. They granted authority (exercised by the EPA) to regulate specific pollutants but greenhouse gases aren’t on that list. Biden tried to use the EPA but was shot down. Now he’s trying a different tack, which will also get shot down. He and the leftists in this country will keep trying to lawlessly force regulation of greenhouse gases, hoping that no one will notice or challenge the attempt to usurp authority they don’t have.
Leftists are authoritarians. The law doesn’t matter. They believe all their causes are so virtuous that they are above the law. That’s why leftists are almost invariably the ones who riot, assault police, burn down cities, disrupt traffic, deface art, and make themselves nuisances to the rest of us law-abiding, civil people.
The two-pronged frontal assault is to vigilantly challenge these attempts in court, and to educate the public about the lies spread by leftists; that there are no risks or harms. When we have a critical mass of informed people, they won’t elect representatives who pursue this nonsense.
This is an inflection point in which politicians start having to make a choice publicly on this issue, just at the right moment.
Tucker Carlson’s 16-minutes on Let’s Go Brandon’s hate speech last night is a must-see:
https://rumble.com/v4hxi9z-tucker-carlsons-powerful-response-to-dementia-patient-joe-bidens-state-of-t.html?mref=qxa4n&mrefc=2
Did Putin allow him to do it? Or did he even write the script for him?
Were you one of the white-washed cheerleaders, Lusername?
[…]
https://www.frontpagemag.com/biden-uses-state-of-the-union-to-threaten-civil-war/
FUB
I don’t know what drugs were pumped into him to temporarily, temporarily make him sound like his old self and cognizant or if no drugs where pumped into him and he’s been faking dementia for the last 4 or 5 years. But I haven’t liked what the Democrats have been trying to do and are doing for the last decade or more (with help from RINOs).
I’d vote for Haley before I’d vote for any Dem even though a vote for Haley would be like my vote for GW or Romney. They only got my vote because the alternatives were Al Gore or Obama.
(Ross Perot’s runs gave us two terms of Bill Clinton. For those who like to scream about The Electoral College and the “popular vote for Pres” and Hillary winning the popular vote, how did Bill do in both elections?)
The Republicans are, in many races, stepping it up across the board.
Perot never wanted to be President. He just didn’t want George Bush to be President again. Remember he quit his campaign when Bush’s poll numbers dropped and his were getting good enough he looked to be a serious contender. Then with Perot out Bush’s numbers went back up. Most of the people asked Clinton, Bush, or Perot who answered or would have answered Perot chose Bush.
So Perot got back into the race but with a carefully adjusted campaign to ensure he got enough votes to tank Bush’s chance of winning, but nowhere near enough to make the media or the country take “3rd” parties seriously.
You can tell when he’s drugged up, whatever they use dilates his eyes and they get real dark. I think its why he squints all the time.
Someone recently observed that he only seems to become animated when he is channelling emperor Palpatine, letting the hate flow through him.
Who’s Riley Lincoln?
What a totally moronic and deluded comment, from the total L-User !
Did Kamala have a spring loaded seat?
Fortunately Kackles did not have a speaking part so the world was spared from this abuse.
She had such a smirk on her face throughout the SOTU speech that I had cause to wonder what she might be sitting on . . . probably causing her to stand up several times to avoid sensory overload right there on national TV.
😉
She was likely high as a kite.
That was my exact thought as well.
Her only hope to be president is for Biden to win, and then be declared incompetent.
Whatever happened to the days when presidential candidates (including sitting presidents seeking a second term) tried to be inspirational? Biden wouldn’t even make it as a car salesman….any car salesman who went about attacking a large portion of his potential customers wouldn’t sell many cars. Political campaigning used to be about selling one’s aspirations and what said candidate could, if elected, do for his/her town, county, state or country. Sadly it’s all “used to be’s”…..Kinda like that old Neil Diamond/Barbara Streisand duet – You don’t Bring me Flowers”. “The used-to-be’s just lay on the floor until we sweep them away….”
Much of those days faded into the sunset when Barry Obama started weaponizing the FBI and the IRS against his political rivals. But Brandon has taken it to another plane with his goons like Mayorkas and Garland. And Garland was this –><– close to getting a seat on the Supreme Court.
Garland could have just replaced Ginsburg and there would have been no change. She vote DNC every time, without fail … he would have done the same; one idiot, one vote.
Now we have kitanji, which is in reality a better deal than garland. She can’t hide her ignorance/bias as well. Same votes, but the background justification will be ridiculous and the bias will show (she will be using clerks that reflect her same successful educational strategies & strengths).
Another GBR destruction story. Story tip
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2024/mar/08/coral-bleaching-great-barrier-reef-australia
Like to see this rule applied to the COP meetings and all attendees.
The most significant climate risks to companies and the earth itself are leftist, activist governments.
“”climate disclosure rule””
Well if there is a rule and one must disclose…
There is no hint of a climate problem, let alone a crisis; and there is certainly no catastrophe on even the most distant of horizons.
However in the Church of the poisoned mind there very much is. Some WUWT readers may have read my opinions on what the ‘new clerisy‘ is doing to the young – pathologising childhood. Creating fears where none need ever exist – and all to a political end.
Climate anxiety never existed until it was invented and then inflicted. But for context we have to remember that now in this day and age even a nasty cut, for example, can induce PTSD.
“”‘Terrified for my future’: climate crisis takes heavy toll on young people’s mental health
Jem, 24, has started losing sleep over the climate emergency. “Over the last two years, I have felt growing anxiety at the state of the environment. It keeps me up at night,” Jem, who works in nature conservation in Somerset, says. “I worry about what future I should be planning for.””
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/mar/30/terrified-for-my-future-climate-crisis-takes-heavy-toll-on-young-peoples-mental-health
24? When I was 24 we had a fab wild time, but then we did not have the indoctrination and mass-media pincer movement attacking us. We were reasonably well educated and informed, not indoctrinated and made to feel guilty for having drawn breath.
What they have done to the young makes me more than terrified for their future.
It is all forced mass suicide.
“”Population Matters campaigns to achieve a sustainable human population, to protect the natural world and improve people’s lives.”” – David Attenborough, Chris Packham, Jane Goodall et al at Population Matters.
I’ve trawled quite a bit and nobody who is freaking out about global population pressure on the Earth as a whole has a figure they consider to be sustainable, and why that figure.
Wishful and vague thinking; and wholly misanthropic.
Just like asking what the optimum CO2 concentration in the atmosphere is.
Indeed it is.
Me too…. it’s sad when people (especially young people) are conditioned to fear that which shouldn’t be feared (climate, weather and weather events). Worse yet, so many people aren’t worrying about the things they should (we should, humanity as a whole) worry about. Like the very real possibility of a full scale nuclear war. The (more remote, but still highly likely at some point) impact of a large asteroid or comet on the earth. That’s like someone freaking out about seeing a mouse scurry across their kitchen floor but doing nothing about the huge dead tree that is leaning ominously towards their home, poised to come crashing down the next time the wind blows. Lose sleep over a tiny rodent but don’t bother about the tree that can destroy the house and maybe even kill its occupants.
For a mouse, unlike the greens, I’d get a good mouser…
“The rule also requires relevant companies to report their organizational climate goals, ..”
They have to have climate goals? How about: None? Then how about: Increase CO2 for the greening of the planet.
That’s what I was thinking. None because humans have no appreciable ability to control the earth’s climate. Kind of like demanding a company state what it plans to do about plate tectonics and land subsidence…
This socialist/marxist presidential decree lawfare, coupled with the State Of The Union lies and insults from his excellency last night, leads to to say………I have censored myself so CTM won’t have to, because he feels guilty for my Michele Obama snip.
“” socialist/marxist””
Biden believes in [state controlled] corporations etc
That’s fascism.
All variants of the same idea:
‘…any economic paradigm that turns over the means of production to “society,” “the workers,” or some other fictitious entity that effectively means the state; and limits or prohibits private property.’
The paradigm doesn’t work, but it’s proponents are alway with us.
https://mises.org/mises-wire/socialists-it-doesnt-matter-if-socialism-works-what-matters-power
It’s a fine line between one and the other. The difference saw one of the most violent episodes in human history: Stalingrad.
That makes Gaza look like a picnic
Too bad both belligerents couldn’t have lost.
I would say Germany taking on the Soviets was not about political philosophy but rather about who exercises the power and who controls the resources.
Lebensraum
FWIW, I believe there was also a deep and ancient ethnic hatred between Slavic and Germanic peoples which Hitler at least exploited, if he did not personally share.
Hey, sleepy Joe: get a clue. Electrons (the active part of electrical power) don’t carry tags indicating where or how they were “sourced”. The common economic term is that they are a “fungible” commodity . . . all mixed together and sold as such under a common name.
Therefore, if I had a business in the US I would likely end up reporting, under your new edict, that the total of all electrons (i.e., electricity) I used in a given tax year came directly from nuclear and/or hydroelectric and/or “renewable” sources, and therefore had no CO2 emissions, and therefore had ZERO “climate related risks”.
You, or your Gestapo-like henchmen, would have to prove me wrong in a court of law. Bring it on!
They don’t have to prove you wrong.
Just taking you to court over and over again will destroy you.
Exactly. If this regulation survives the challenge, it will be an open door to green “lawfare”, and the SEC can sit back and let “activist shareholders” carry the ball. They don’t even have to bring a case themselves, although that’s always an option.
From the above article:
“The final rule mandates medium-sized and large companies to report emissions attributable to the electricity they use to power their business operations starting in fiscal years 2026 and 2028, respectively.”
Of course here we have yet another example coming from would-be-king Biden to the effect of “Do as I say, not as I do.”
Observe that such a “final rule” does not apply to the White House (a business by any other name) nor to the Biden administration’s various offices nor to the Executive Branch of government as a whole nor to its large “industries” such as DoD, HHS, HUD, DoE, DoI, and DoT.
ROTFL!
Where is the one place in the entire U.S. where it is legal to pour a bottle of toluene down the sink?
Do not demand that. You are demanding a new, permanent patronage position. As political theater, one might raise it to ‘cabinet level’. yuch.
For what amount to 30 minutes a year of actual work.
“The rule also requires relevant companies to report their organizational climate goals, such as plans to ditch fossil fuels.”
Dear SEC Comrads,
My plan for ditching fossil fuels for the 2024/2025 fiscal year is that I’m not going to. It’s not that I don’t have a plan, my plan is not to ditch them. Since you have no power to force me to ditch them I trust this will meet my regulatory compliance for the year.
Now piss off.
Sincerely,
Your ever dutiful servant.
ycfs,
You’re prepared for an in-depth IRS compliance audit of all your corporate tax returns for the last three—and possibly six—years, right?
Seriously? Ok, I’ll play along. Yes..yes I am. And I’ll immediately file for a restraining order under the premise the IRS has not done a proper EPA impact assessment based on the predicate that their audit will surely increase CO2 emissions leading to disastrous climate change outcomes. Until such time that the IRS can demonstrate that there will be no (as in 0) impact to the climate due to their audit they must be restrained from requiring me to participate in one.
You’re relying on government to protect and courts to judge fairly.
Dear SEC,
Our plan to reduce our carbon footprint for the fiscal year 2024/2025 is as follows. We currently employee ~1000 people. Since a human emits ~1kg of CO2 per day this amounts to 1 metric tonne/day. We will be instituting a weekly mandatory ‘day without breathing’ for all employees thus saving 1 metric tonne/week and thus 52 metric tonnes/year. Or roughly the equivalent of removing 10 cars from the roads.
In fact we think our plan is so ground breaking and innovative that we encourage the SEC to require all companies to institute a weekly mandatory ‘day without breathing’. In the US alone with current employment at ~160 million people this will save roughly 160,000 metric tonnes per week, or the equivalent of removing 32,000 cars from the roads on a WEEKLY basis. I’m sure you can complete the math from here to recognize that this plan would make the US carbon neutral with respect to fossil fuel cars within 5 to 7 years.
I trust this plan meets with your approval.
Yours Sincerely,
Death
The current SCOTUS will take a very dim view of this and any other administrative overreach. It is not so much that SEC “has very little to do” with climate policy, it is that it has NO authority to regulate climate related matters.
This rule was Dead On Arrival.
“emissions attributable to the electricity they use”
How are they supposed to do that when electrons don’t carry little tags saying if they came from a generator powered by wind, gas, coal, oil, hydro, solar, geothermal, or nuclear?
Clearly it’s a rhetorical question, but the person in charge could multiply usage by percentage generated by which source by the supplier. The mandate requires graphs like Ercot spplies.
Good news, keep their feet to the fire.
This is yet another example of governments trying to ram unattainable climate goals down the throats of businesses, industries and consumers. The last of these will be likely to face a double whammy with both higher taxes for starters and higher prices which producers will pass on to them because of their higher operating costs. And in the end, fossil fuel consumption and emissions will both continue to rise. Remember that despite 28 COP conferences and a multitude of new regulations and clean energy subsidies, oil, coal, and gas production and use have risen almost 60% during the past three decades.
If they are required to list the climate change risks, they should start by listing the government actions forced upon them and the costs and how much it it raises prices and lowers profits.