Yeah, the minute the SEC passed the rule lawsuits were filed. I hope the lawyers are planning on asking the 3 Democrats on the SEC who voted for the rule if they are driving EVs, not taking fossil fueled flights, and living in tiny homes
Court Temporarily Halts S.E.C.’s New Climate Rules
A federal court on Friday temporarily halted new rules from the Securities Exchange Commission that require public companies to disclose more about the business risks they face from climate change, siding with two oil and gas companies that criticized the requirements as costly and arbitrary.
Approved by the S.E.C. this month, the rules require some publicly traded companies to disclose their climate risks, and how much greenhouse gas emissions they produce. Industry groups, as well as their political allies, have filed numerous lawsuits challenging the regulation.
It pretty much applies to most public companies that are regulated by the SEC, which is mostly companies with more than $10 million in assets whose securities are held by more than 500 owners. Supposedly it’s just the biggest of the big companies, which would seem to be targeted and not equal application of the law.
The U.S. Chamber of Commerce, which represents a wide cross-section of industries, filed suit in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit this week to stop the rules, calling them unconstitutional. Ten Republican-led states have also sued to stop the rules.
The emergency stay granted by Fifth Circuit judges on Friday came in a case brought by two fracking companies, Liberty Energy and Nomad Proppant Services. “There is no clear authority for the S.E.C. to effectively regulate the controversial issue of climate change,” the two companies wrote in their petition. They were “arbitrary and capricious,” the two companies said, and violated the First Amendment, which protects free speech, by “effectively mandating discussions about climate change.”
In addition, the rules would cost companies “irreparable injury in the form of unrecoverable compliance costs,” they said.
Well, we’ll have to see what happens.
Environmental groups have also challenged the rules, saying the S.E.C. didn’t go far enough in protecting investors.
“As climate impacts like wildfires, floods, and drought disrupt every facet of the U.S. economy, the S.E.C. chose to bury its head in the sand instead of requiring companies to show the full climate risks they pose,” said Hana Vizcarra, an attorney at Earthjustice, which along with the Sierra Club and other environmental groups have also sued the S.E.C.
It’s easy to say for them, since they really do not have a stake in the regulated companies. The SEC should apply the rules to organizations like the Sierra Clumb and EarthJustice. It’s super easy to force others to do things you aren’t required to do.
One of the interesting things that is happening culturaly is the return to the fold by many democrats.
By that I simply mean the return to sanity. Cuomo and his new online news has returned to the left to slightly left in his announcement that he has always believed in Free speech and that the woke ideology is driving the left into the Abyss.
Gen Z’ers are doing videos condemning the economy despite the fact that they are lying in order to do so. For Example a viral video making the Tik Tok rounds with over 5 million views so far is of a young woman who lives in a 2 bedroom apartment with 8 cats, works as does her husband and just went on an expensive vacation.
Her post was about how she cant pay the rent, go on vacation and the economy sucks.
Why? Because the left doesn’t care about likes and views. They rape Disney but never watch their movies. They protest the climate but never partake in any meaningful changes.
The left still believes the Russia gate narrative. In fact Ben David a very successful pod-caster who is neither right nor left had on an Elwood P. Dowd clone a few months back who was using DOWD’S talking points verbatim to talk about how he hates Trump.
These people are on the wrong side of history and are beginning to move back into the fold. I am not saying they are becoming Republicans but rather are moving back into the fold of Sane, rational patriots who understand the value of freedom and Democracy that the trash talking, smack dealing businessman from the streets of NYC peddles daily in his march back to the White House.
People who don’t understand the MAGA movement have not opened their eyes to what is going on around them. Those that have are people that are breaking away from this woke insanity and coming back to the Democratic Fold that is overseen by some semblance of rationality.
There is a right side and a wrong side of History. Conservatives are slow to change but they do change. So do the Democrats and they are changing and returning to the fold. The Culture war is being won by the right because it is rooted in Freedom of speech and not criminal indictments because you do not like what the other side says or does.
And example of this is two fold. France passed a law making it a felony to speak against COVID boosters with a 4 year prison term awaiting you. CANADA just said if you refuse to work overtime you will be jailed.
The left cannot speak of freedom and Democracy without being hypocrites today. JFK’s Democratic party were staunch defenders of freedoms, even up to 2008 when the party was vehemently opposed to the Patriot Act only to embrace it when Obama said it was the right thing to do.
Now they have weaponized it against their political opponents which puts them squarely on the wrong side of history when it will be written.
Arbitrary and capricious is the right argument to make but that is a hard sell to many courts since most of what the federal government regulates is arbitrary and capricious. The chamber of commerce may fear the cost of compliance, but they should fear the cost of not complying enough. The obvious trap in this regulation is that the SEC will be grading their papers and any company that fails to support the party line of “grave harm from climate change” will see their officers jailed and impoverished for making fraudulent SEC declarations. The SEC itself, not accountants and company staff, will determine the correct amount of “Harm” company activities will do to the climate and will then exact “taxes” to compensate and the company filings will be forced to agree with them under penalty of jail.