The attorneys general of 25 Republican-led states are pushing back against a new climate agenda that the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission is putting forth.
In a public comment letter that the officials released on Tuesday, they said the SEC needs to rescind a proposal it made that would enable natural asset companies, or NACs, to be created.
The group of attorneys general — which is led by Kris Kobach of Kansas and Sean Reyes of Utah — wrote that NACs could threaten national security and also subordinate interests of Americans “to the aims of environmental activists as well as to United Nations policies and mandates.”
The proposal would see the SEC allow, for the first time, the New York Stock Exchange to list NACs.
The Intrinsic Exchange Group said that this new company type is chartered to “protect, restore and grow the natural assets under their management to foster healthy ecosystems.”
The IEG and NYSE collaborate to develop this additional corporate taxonomy.
If the new SEC rule were to be finalized, NACs could be publicly traded.
In a recent statement, Reyes spoke out against the rule when he said:
“Of all the objectionable and extreme policies in the ESG menagerie, NACs are among the most egregious and least defensible legally. Not only do NACs suffer the same deficiencies as other ESG investments, but they represent a host of additional dangers to the American public.”
He added that these companies rely on models that are unproven and focused not on providing value and returns for their investors, but on “restrictions of legal and productive use of natural resources, with dollar deployed in amorphous and undefined categories such as ‘natural assets’ and ‘ecosystem services.’”
Reyes pointed out that NACs masquerade as a new tool that can be used to bring good to the public at large, but in reality, they just help to “accomplish an activist political agenda.”
The attorneys general from Wyoming, West Virginia, Virginia, Texas, Tennessee, South Carolina, Oklahoma, Ohio, New Hampshire, North Dakota, Nebraska, Montana, Missouri, Mississippi, Louisiana, Kentucky, Iowa, Indiana, Idaho, Florida, Arkansas, Alaska and Alabama all joined in signing the letter with those from Kansas and Utah.
About a month ago, the SEC delayed the rulemaking on NACs so that stakeholders would have additional time to consider the proposal. The delay was granted after 22 GOP state financial officers requested a “reasonable public comment process” rather than something that was rushed.
The state officials aren’t the only ones who are against this new SEC proposal. Will Hild, who works for the watchdog group Consumers Research as its executive director, spoke with FOX Business recently and said:
“The collusion between radical progressive groups like IEG and the government must be opposed vigorously. Kudos to AGs Reyes and Kobach and others who’ve called out this illegal proposed rule, which would have paved the way for a fraudulent, nonsensical scheme of assessing value.”
