SEC shows dangerous commitment to ESG agenda

This article originally appeared in The Washington Times on January 16, 2024.

People around the world are waking up to the anti-energy, anti-growth consequences of big-government policies advanced in the name of fighting climate change. So naturally, the climate lobby has produced yet another creative way to hide the ball.

The latest scheme comes from the Biden administration’s Securities and Exchange Commission in the form of a new investment vehicle for so-called green investing: natural asset companies, or NACs. As environmental, social and governance investing faces mounting pushback for sacrificing investor returns in favor of political aims, the SEC is proposing to allow this novel investment vehicle, which openly puts maximizing “ecological performance” over investor returns, to be publicly listed on the New York Stock Exchange.

This development should concern all Americans, including those who do not closely track the financial markets. NACs would operate by assigning monetary value to ecological processes such as “clean air, water supply, flood protection, productive soil for agriculture, climate stability, [and] habitat for wildlife, among others.” They would then buy the rights to control “ecosystem services” on public and private land.

Read full op-ed in The Washington Times.