In the spring of 2021, we wrote columns for Agribusiness Freedom Foundation chronicling the activist left’s progress in cowing major U.S. corporations into “woke” philosophies, including those on animal welfare, green climate change theology, apologies for so-called racist pasts, offending gender identities and lots of irrelevant or downright obstructive actions, to corporations making money.
With Democrats running Congress and Joe Biden occupying the White House, the woke agenda has gotten so ridiculous they will try anything to punish and engender hatred of a constitutional republic like ours, destroy the economy, bolster government authority, eliminate national borders and engender an unprecedented crime wave.
A recent spectre has our federal government inventing another way to reorder and reprioritize business objectives, by forcing companies to comply with regulations based on little or no evidence of human-made climate change.
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The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has proposed to force every publicly traded company to calculate and report its entire carbon footprint, as well as every entity in its supply chain. And, no, the resulting outrage hasn’t prompted the SEC to withdraw the proposal, say, on grounds of temporary bureaucratic insanity.
It’s an impossible task for any business, much less farmers and ranchers. As someone suggested at a producer’s meeting, can you imagine going around and counting how many tires are on your place and figuring out how much carbon was emitted in manufacturing those tires? Because if a feedyard sells to one of the big packers, or the packers sell to a publicly traded restaurant chain or retail chain, it’s going to need to do all those calculations and then it’s going to have to get data from ranchers who sold to them, etc., etc.
So what is the SEC supposed to be doing?
The mission of the SEC is to protect investors; maintain fair, orderly and efficient markets; and facilitate capital formation. The SEC strives to promote a market environment that is worthy of the public’s trust.
Their goals: At the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), we work together to make a positive impact on America’s economy, our capital markets and people’s lives.
Nowhere does it say the agency is to force businesses to calculate the incalculable, carry out executive orders issued on dubious grounds not congressionally authorized or assume the burden of saving Planet Earth from dangers unproven and beyond their powers.
This is part of judging corporations’ environmental-social-corporate (ESG) governance quotient — in other words, their wokeness holiness score.
How can a federal agency expect food supply chains to calculate exacting carbon footprint figures for supply chains extending from the consumer’s plate back to the bull, the tank and the cow? Or back to the grass?
The SEC’s news release is not reassuring. By the way, substitute “American saps” for “registrant”:
The proposed rules also would require a registrant to disclose information about its direct greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions (Scope 1) and indirect emissions from purchased electricity or other forms of energy (Scope 2). In addition, a registrant would be required to disclose GHG emissions from upstream and downstream activities in its value chain (Scope 3), if the material or if the registrant has set a GHG emissions target or goal that includes Scope 3 emissions.
This next borders on the comical but they’re serious.
The rules spell out disclosures required about climate-related risks to the business, whether they are material risks and how they would affect its outlook and the impact of “climate-related events,” such as “severe weather” and “other natural conditions.”
Like maybe hail, blizzards or drought there, city slicker?
We doubt these bureaucrats knew enough to comprehend this rule’s demands on agriculture. They certainly don’t understand weather and the cattle business.
This kind of thing has become a pattern of the far left down here. Pass laws and promulgate regulations you know are unconstitutional because you want to, and make anyone who disagrees sue to correct the error — someday.
Big business — and all the rest — reacted with horror when the realization of this proposal sunk in. There has been a lot of wailing and gnashing of teeth. The SEC has been silent.
The best news was a ruling from the U.S. Supreme Court — after the SEC proposal — that ruled federal agencies cannot make policy proposals that would force major change without specific authorization from Congress.
Federal agencies all over Washington reacted with disbelief. No carte blanche authority to fulfill their dreams? Heresy!
“Earlier this year, the Biden administration proposed a massive climate disclosure rule that will create new reporting burdens for every farm, ranch and small business in the country. This plan will harm producers and consumers alike,” said NCBA environmental counsel Mary-Thomas Hart. “NCBA is proud to support the Food and Energy Security Act because rules like the SEC’s emissions disclosure mandate add a costly burden to cattle producers, rural communities and consumers across the country.”
