Federal Court Halts Biden Admin’s Corporate Emissions Disclosure Rule

From the DAILY CALLER

Daily Caller News Foundation

NICK POPE

CONTRIBUTOR

An appellate court paused the Biden administration’s corporate emissions disclosure rule on Friday.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit granted Liberty Energy’s request for an administrative stay against the Securities and Exchange Commission’s (SEC) corporate climate risk and emissions disclosure rule, according to a court filing. The regulation requires medium-sized and large public corporations to disclose climate change-related risks and data on the emissions created directly by their businesses in financial reports.

Liberty Energy, a company that specializes in fracking, asked the court to halt the policy’s implementation while its case works through the judicial system, according to Bloomberg. The judges who signed off on the stay did not specify why they decided to do so in the court order. (RELATED: Green Firm That Advised SEC On Proposed Emissions Rule Sold Carbon Credits From Chinese Region Known For Slave Labor)

A coalition of Republican state attorneys general hit the SEC with their own legal challenge over the policy on March 6, just hours after the agency announced the final rule. The Sierra Club and Earthjustice are also suing the SEC for the disclosure, arguing that it is not aggressive enough.

The final version of the rule was not as ambitious as the SEC’s initial March 2022 proposal, which would have also required companies to track, calculate and disclose the emissions generated by the end use of their products and services, for example.

“Today’s ruling is a fantastic and expected win for consumers. This rule is the largest power grab in SEC history,” Will Hild, the executive director of Consumers’ Research, told the Daily Caller News Foundation after the Fifth Circuit granted the stay. “It’s illegitimate, mocks their statutory purpose, and hopefully will be fully annulled by the courts in coming days.”

Neither the SEC nor the White House responded immediately to requests for comment.

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mleskovarsocalrrcom
March 16, 2024 10:52 am

Lawfare works both ways. Unfortunately the courts in America today are biased …. by design. While we were sleeping the courts were bought, corrupted, and used.

Reply to  mleskovarsocalrrcom
March 16, 2024 11:23 am

We need Judges, from the top down, who’s rulings are based on The Constitution and The Bill of Rights.
They are the bedrock.
Changes can be made via the built-in Amendment Process. It should never be done from The Bench.
The “Liberal”, “Conservative” labels shouldn’t enter in.
“Is Government allowed to do that?” should be the only issue.

Scissor
Reply to  mleskovarsocalrrcom
March 16, 2024 11:26 am

For one thing, NGOs that receive government grants should have restrictions on who they can sue.

Reply to  Scissor
March 16, 2024 12:37 pm

Paying government cash to NGOs should be banned.

Paying government cash to NGOs via “foreign aid” should be banned.

Reply to  karlomonte
March 17, 2024 4:21 am

Using NGO’s is how the radical Left gets around obeying the law. I don’t want my tax money going to these people.

Reply to  mleskovarsocalrrcom
March 16, 2024 1:23 pm

While we were in an induced, feel-good coma, courtesy of the public school system and the lapdog Mass Media, the evil doers hiding under a stone, were fixing voter registration lists with much more names than people 18 and over, as in Michigan, Colorado, etc., plus they were buying the police force, the post office and the courts, and almost all government employees, plus they controll the counting centers and the printing press, in case more ballots were needed to get their favorite candidates over the hump, by hook and by crook.

They tell you over and over, the election was free, open and fair, the best in the world, the most democratic, tralala!!

Oh, and the US Attorney General, stated, IDs of any kind are not required, because that would be “discriminatory”, but every European country REQUIRES PHOTO IDs, and the lapdog Media just nods and says nothing. THE FIX IS IN, PER ELON MUSK

Rud Istvan
March 16, 2024 11:16 am

More Biden over reach. The SEC was established by the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 as subsequently amended. It is very dense and detailed, running 41 sections and 373 pages. The SEC is established by section 4. Public company reporting requirements are set forth by section 13. Stuff like a requirement for audited financial statements, and a management discretionary discussion of business risk exposures (I.e. supply chain risk).
NOTHING about climate or emissions.
So the SEC rule will fail since the major questions doctrine (WV v EPA) says Congress, not agencies, gets to decide major questions.

Reply to  Rud Istvan
March 16, 2024 12:08 pm

‘So the SEC rule will fail since the major questions doctrine (WV v EPA) says Congress, not agencies, gets to decide major questions.’

That’s swell, as far as that goes. Unfortunately, Congress still gets to wipe its feet on the Constitution, which it has consistently been doing since US v. Carolene Products Co.

Rud Istvan
Reply to  Frank from NoVA
March 16, 2024 12:35 pm

Do not agree. A1§8.3 gives Congress the right to regulate interstate commerce. Congress chose to prohibit interstate commerce in filled milk products on public health grounds. Caroline Products sold filled milk (skim milk plus coconut oil) and sued on grounds the new law was unconstitutional. US v Caroline Products (1937) held that the law was presumptively constitutional because it had a rational basis and was neither arbitrary nor discriminatory.

The case is famous for footnote four, which opened the door for later strict scrutiny standards in many situations.

Reply to  Rud Istvan
March 16, 2024 6:28 pm

Sorry Rud, but I’m pushing back on this. A1§8.3 allows Congress ‘[t]o regulate Commerce with foreign Nations, and among the several States, and with the Indian Tribes’, the plain meaning of which (in the second clause) was to prevent the States from setting up their own interstate tariffs, building robber baron forts, putting chains across rivers, etc. Wickard v. Filburn (1942), of course, completely opened the barn door to Federal intervention in commerce, but, as I alluded to, above, the horses were already loose after US v. Carolene Products (1938).

All of us alive today can agree that the concept of ‘filled milk’ sounds pretty yucky, but it was a viable product back before the advent and widespread adoption of commercial and home refrigeration. To say that it was a ‘public health’ issue is disingenuous since the sale of the product was not banned intra-state. So we all need to be honest and admit the sole intent of the law was to eliminate competition to the dairy industry and raise prices. Not a great outcome for poor people during the Depression, but I’m sure it worked well for New Deal politicians looking for farm state votes. And it still works today.

Again, the impact of Carolene Products is that the Federal government can do anything it wants to us economically, a more recent example of that being the Supreme Court’s acquiescence to ‘Obama Care’. While it is true that Footnote Four, for which the case is famous, does provide us with an ‘out’ in the event the Feds try to limit any recourse to their power grabs by voting them out, we clearly saw that was a thin reed when the Court declined to take up Texas v. Pennsylvania (2020).

Reply to  Frank from NoVA
March 17, 2024 4:34 am

“when the Court declined to take up Texas v. Pennsylvania (2020).”

A truly shameful act, which has seriously damaged our Republic and our confidence in the U.S. Supreme Court. Chief Justice Roberts ought to be ashamed of himself. History will not treat him kindly. He allowed an illegal election to continue by his refusal to hear the case.

The only entity that has jurisdiction over disputes between States is the U.S. Supreme Court, yet here we have a huge dispute between States that can decide a presidential election either way, and the U.S. Supreme Court runs away and hides and allows the election fraud to continue. And what did we get? Four years of the worst president evah! Election laws were clearly violated and the U.S. Supreme Court stood by and did nothing about it.

When crunch time came, the U.S. Supreme Court punted. So how do we have confidence in the U.S. Suprme Court now?

Reply to  Tom Abbott
March 17, 2024 9:45 am

‘History will not treat him kindly.’

History is written by the winners. If that means the Left, they will always vilify him for those times he did uphold the Constitution. Moderates never get it that they will obtain no quarter from the Left.

Reply to  Frank from NoVA
March 18, 2024 4:13 am

Yes, the radical Left does not play fair. “Anything necessary, legal or illegal”, is their moto.

J Boles
Reply to  Rud Istvan
March 16, 2024 12:19 pm

Can they not fudge the numbers creatively? Who is going to check them? Legions of scrutinizers with studies degrees have now found a niche?

Rud Istvan
Reply to  J Boles
March 16, 2024 1:02 pm

It won’t stand. But if it somehow does, no, you cannot creatively fudge SEC demanded numbers. That would be a section 13 crime. The Act sets forth many, many financial crimes in its various sections, with serious federal consequences. Bernie Madoff. Sam Bankman-Fried.

Coeur de Lion
March 16, 2024 11:28 am

Seems a stupid and pointless burden on business. And what will happen to the figures produced? Used to shame in some bizarre way? Filed away? No doubt a ‘green’ job or two amassing the data and writing a pointless report? Will action be taken? Close down some polluting businesses? Madnesd

AWG
Reply to  Coeur de Lion
March 16, 2024 11:47 am

Remember all of those woke students taking “studies” courses in University who we all laughed at as they were being indoctrinated into not having any marketable skills but only amassing all kinds of student debt and putting off joining the workforce for another five to ten years?

The Fer’al Government is creating Make-Work and sinecures for these worthless people while converting their “loans” into grants. These worthless graduates produce no wealth and only consume while making US companies uncompetitive to the US Government’s real constituent/client: China.

That, and this is yet another vehicle for government to extort, shakedown, harass, litigate and persecute companies that don’t pay tribute to The Party or to The Party’s registered affiliate NGOs.

Paul S
Reply to  AWG
March 16, 2024 12:36 pm

It is amazing the uncontrolled growth of the Federal Bureaucracy. When 50% of all of us are employed by “the Government”, then we will know that we have become a true socialist state.

AWG
March 16, 2024 11:40 am

How does Sierra Club and Earthjustice have standing? They have no skin in the game.

Reply to  AWG
March 16, 2024 12:17 pm

YOUR skin is in their game.

Reply to  Gunga Din
March 16, 2024 2:21 pm

Your skin IS their game. !

Bob
March 16, 2024 12:53 pm

Good news.

Dave Burton
March 16, 2024 5:50 pm

It would be nice if some major corporation had the courageousness to “disclose” the net public good and negative “social cost of carbon” attributable to CO2 emissions. (Hey, I can dream, can’t I?)

https://sealevel.info/negative_social_cost_of_carbon.html

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The peer-reviewed evidence is compelling that CO2 emissions are net-beneficial, rather than harmful, and the social cost of carbon is negative. Here are some papers:

  1. Dayaratna, K.D., McKitrick, R. & Michaels, P.J. Climate sensitivity, agricultural productivity and the social cost of carbon in FUND. Environ Econ Policy Stud 22, 433–448 (2020). doi:10.1007/s10018-020-00263-w
  2. Uddin S, Löw M, Parvin S, Fitzgerald GJ, Tausz-Posch S, Armstrong R, O’Leary G, Tausz M. Elevated [CO2] mitigates the effect of surface drought by stimulating root growth to access sub-soil water. PLoS One. 2018 Jun 14;13(6):e0198928. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0198928
  3. Fitzgerald GJ, et al. Elevated atmospheric [CO2] can dramatically increase wheat yields in semi-arid environments and buffer against heat waves. Glob Chang Biol. 2016 Jun;22(6):2269-84. Glob Chang Biol. 2016 Jun;22(6):2269-84. doi:10.1111/gcb.13263.
  4. Donohue, RJ, Roderick, ML, McVicar, TR, and Farquhar, GD (2013), Impact of CO2 fertilization on maximum foliage cover across the globe’s warm, arid environments, Geophys. Res. Lett., 40, 3031–3035, doi:10.1002/grl.50563.
  5. O’Leary GJ, et al. Response of wheat growth, grain yield and water use to elevated CO2 under a Free-Air CO2 Enrichment (FACE) experiment and modelling in a semi-arid environment. Glob Chang Biol. 2015 Jul;21(7):2670–2686. doi:10.1111/gcb.12830.
  6. Loehle, C., Idso, C., & Bently Wigley, T. (2016). Physiological and ecological factors influencing recent trends in United States forest health responses to climate change. Forest Ecology and Management, 363, 179–189. doi:10.1016/j.foreco.2015.12.042.
  7. Zhu, Z Piao, S, Myneni, RB, et al (2016). Greening of the Earth and its drivers. Nature Climate Change, 6(8), 791–795. doi:10.1038/nclimate3004.
  8. Gregory, Ken (2022). Social Cost (Benefit) of Carbon Dioxide from FUND, with Corrected Temperatures, Energy and CO2 Fertilization.
  9. Chun JA, Wang Q, Timlin D, Fleisher D, Reddy V (2011). Effect of elevated carbon dioxide and water stress on gas exchange and water use efficiency in corn. Agricultural and Forest Meteorology, Vol 151, Issue 3, pp 378–384. doi:10.1016/j.agrformet.2010.11.015.
  10. Taylor, C & Schlenker, W (2021). Environmental Drivers of Agricultural Productivity Growth: CO2 Fertilization of US Field Crops. National Bureau of Economic Research, no. w29320doi:10.3386/w29320.
  11. Poorter et al (2021), A meta-analysis of responses of C3 plants to atmospheric CO2: dose-response curves for 85 traits ranging from the molecular to the whole-plant level. New Phytol, 233: 1560-1596. doi:10.1111/nph.17802. Note their Fig. 5i (which I annotated -DAB).
  12. Those are all recent papers, but studies measuring the benefits of elevated CO2 go back more than a century; for example: Gradenwitz A. Carbonic Acid Gas to Fertilize the Air. Scientific American, November 27, 1920. doi:10.1038/scientificamerican11271920-549

Here’s a NASA video about how CO2 is greening the Earth (a very good thing):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zOwHT8yS1XI

Learn more about climate change, here:

https://sealevel.info/learnmore.html

lynn
March 16, 2024 8:03 pm

Just another thing for the lawyers to sue companies over. Besides that, people do not have the right to know everything about companies. Plus the cost of gathering those numbers is not cheap. Especially accurately gathering those numbers. Rest assured, once published, companies will be taken to task over the numbers if they are understated in the slightest.