Biden Admin Invents New Function for Federal Agency to Force Climate Agenda on Businesses

Biden Admin Invents New Function for Federal Agency to Force Climate Agenda on Businesses


By hook or by crook, the Biden regime is working overtime to foist its insane, economy-killing ‘climate’ agenda on the country since the White House can’t get it passed by Congress.

As such, the regime has now created a brand-new function for a nearly 100-year-old federal agency in order to force the administration’s expensive climate agenda on American businesses.

The Blaze reports:

The Securities and Exchange Commission — a government agency established in the aftermath of the 1929 stock market crash to protect investors and maintain fair markets — may soon become a key player in imposing President Biden’s climate agenda.

In a 3-to-1 vote last week, unelected Democratic bureaucrats who serve as the agency’s commissioners voted without authorization from Congress to impose sweeping new rules that require all publicly traded companies to disclose how their business affects “climate change.”

A press release from the SEC notes that the proposed new rules will mandate that businesses disclose their greenhouse gas emissions (as if there is a real way to even measure that) as well as any and all information that is relevant to “climate-related risks that are reasonably likely to have a material impact on their business, results of operations, or financial condition” — whatever that means.

The SEC’s lone Republican commissioner, Hester Peirce, quipped in a lengthy statement of dissent that the move will essentially mean the SEC has reinvented itself as the “Securities and Environment Commission,” all without one iota of input from the American people (especially business owners).

“Contrary to the hopes of the eager anticipators, the proposal will not bring consistency, comparability, and reliability to company climate disclosures,” she said.

“The proposal, however, will undermine the existing regulatory framework that for many decades has undergirded consistent, comparable, and reliable company disclosures.  We cannot make such fundamental changes to our disclosure regime without harming investors, the economy, and this agency. For that reason, I cannot support the proposal,” she continued, adding:

The proposal turns the disclosure regime on its head.  Current SEC disclosure mandates are intended to provide investors with an accurate picture of the company’s present and prospective performance through managers’ own eyes.  How are they thinking about the company?  What opportunities and risks do the board and managers see?  What are the material determinants of the company’s financial value? 

The proposal, by contrast, tells corporate managers how regulators, doing the bidding of an array of non-investor stakeholders, expect them to run their companies. It identifies a set of risks and opportunities—some perhaps real, others clearly theoretical—that managers should be considering and even suggests specific ways to mitigate those risks. It forces investors to view companies through the eyes of a vocal set of stakeholders, for whom a company’s climate reputation is of equal or greater importance than a company’s financial performance.

She went on to argue that the new rules are going to hamstring businesses with reams of unnecessary and burdensome regulations that will negatively impact investors and the economy. In addition, she argued that the SEC has no mandate to issue broad climate rules since Congress never provided the agency with that authority.

“Congress gave us an important mission — protecting investors, facilitating capital formation, and fostering fair, orderly, and efficient markets — and granted us sufficient regulatory authority to achieve that mission,” she wrote. “This proposal steps outside our statutory limits by using the disclosure framework to achieve objectives that are not ours to pursue.”

If the SEC issues these rules no doubt they are going to be challenged in court. But the regime doesn’t care; Democrats will do anything to advance the cause of climate alarmism, which really is nothing more than an agenda of control.


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