Out of the many compelling arguments free market activists marshalled to torpedo efforts by environmental activists to lock down large swaths of land, it was the national security concerns that carried the day, according to energy policy analysts.
The State Financial Officers Foundation, which advocates for free markets and “pro-growth policies,” was among the key players calling attention to the potential points of vulnerability associated with the creation of “Natural Asset Companies” (NACs) as new entities on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE).
In a letter to the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), the financial officers explained how NACs could “serve as unique instruments for those looking to harm our country.”
They were hardly alone as a coalition of state attorneys general made certain to focus attention on how the SEC’s proposed rule could further accelerate China’s land purchase initiatives in the U.S. In their correspondence, the attorneys warned the commissioners that NACs could provide hostile foreign actors like China with additional avenues to curtail American economic activity.
Under the proposed rule, NACs would “hold the rights to ecological performance” essentially giving them complete reign over private and public lands. The overarching purpose would be to advance what the rule describes as “sustainable revenue generating operations.”
What would this mean in practice?
In effect, productive exercises like ranching, farming, drilling, and mining would all be off limits. The letter from the state attorneys general points to what they view as a “fatal flaw” in the NAC concept that proceeds from an attempt to “create economic value from processes not backed by economic activity.”
The attorneys also told the SEC that the proposed rule could empower narrow special interests and give added leverage to the United Nations at the expense of the American people.
The SEC would effectively “subordinate the interests of millions of Americans to the aims of environmental activists as well as to United Nations policies and mandates,” the attorneys wrote. “This would violate the text and purposes of federal securities laws, the Administrative Procedure Act, and the U.S. Constitution,” they added.
Dan Kish, a senior fellow at the Institute for Energy Research, a Washington-based nonprofit that favors free market policies, sees “an all-out assault on private property” at work not just with the NAC proposal, but with a range of policies. He highlights President Biden’s 30×30 plan built around a pledge to preserve 30% of the nation’s air and water by 2030 as a prime example of “government land grab schemes” operating under the guise of conservation.
“There’s an attempt here on the part of the Biden administration, progressive environmental activists, and other actors who favor more government control over the private sector to burrow underground and chip away at our constitutional order with initiatives that might sound benign on the surface. But at least this time around, there was enough exposure from some very articulate sources, and I think the points raised about national security, and the opening a proposal like this could give to a country like China to undermine our energy production came through loud and clear.”
The State Financial Officers made certain of that by driving home the fact that where NAC managers are put in charge every acre of land would be unavailable for productive use.
“We see a plausible scenario where our foreign adversaries look to NAC investment as a way to hamper our economic wellbeing -especially to hamper our ability to utilize our natural resources for our economic wellbeing,” they said.
The SEC officially withdrew the proposal in January, but Margaret Byfield, executive director of American Stewards of Liberty, a group devoted to protecting private property rights, sees continuing efforts underway to create new assets out of land, water, and air that have no consumer value.
The “National Strategy to Develop Statistics for Environmental-Economic Decisions” set in motion by the Biden White House figures prominently into this strategy.
“The White House purpose here is to place these new values on the federal balance sheet,” she said. “These contrived new values are natural processes no one has a right to own, such as pollination and photosynthesis. In essence, they are asserting ownership and regulatory power over these processes and creating a new administrative pathway to control food, fiber, energy, and mineral production on our federal and private lands.” Byfield noted the accounting strategy is being implemented across 27 federal agencies.
As foreboding as this sounds, Byfield sees cause for encouragement in the form of effective free market activism that can take inspiration from the successful campaign to take down the NACs.
“There were multiple issues raised with the NACs that convinced the commission to reverse course, but the national security angle is one that pulled in people from all across the country,” she said. “Outfits like the State Financial Officers decisively turned the debate with well-crafted, and convincing arguments. There are good reasons to be concerned about China’s intentions. They are working to get control of our society on a number of different fronts, and this would be one way to get control of our natural resources without a fight.”
NACs are an invention of the Intrinsic Exchange Group, also known as IEG a “financial innovation company” that presented the concept to the SEC. On its website, the group described NACs as a “new class of security designed to incorporate the value of nature and the vital ecosystem services nature produces.”
The joint role IEG played in crafting the NAC proposal alongside the NYSE is the subject of a September 2021 press release from the Rockefeller Foundation, a left-leaning philanthropic institution that funds progressive environmental causes among other efforts. Financial records show the foundation donated $750,000 to IEG in 2019 and $1 million in 2021.
This financial trail serves as proof that “America’s ruling political class is determined to undermine the global position of the U.S. and its allies,” Bonner Cohen, a senior fellow with the National Center for Public Policy Research, a Washington-based free market think tank, said.
“Having your chief geopolitical rival unilaterally curtail its access to its own natural resources is a gift no serious international actor should allow itself to imagine. But this is exactly the spectacle being presented to Beijing, Moscow, and Teheran by green elites in the United States,” Cohen continued.
Kevin Mooney is the Senior Investigative Reporter at the Commonwealth Foundation, Pennsylvania’s free-market think tank, and writes for several national publications. Twitter: @KevinMooneyDC
The views and opinions expressed in this commentary are those of the author and do not reflect the official position of the Daily Caller News Foundation.
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