Foreign Entanglements and Climate Change

Published May 24, 2017

The Foreign Stability Board (FSB), is an international body promoting “global financial stability by coordinating the development of regulatory, supervisory and other financial sector policies.”

“In April 2015, a meeting of G20 finance ministers and central bank governors asked the FSB to convene public- and private-sector participants to review how the financial sector can take account of climate-related issues.”

The FSB responded at the Paris COP 21 meeting by establishing a task force to examine “climate-related financial risk disclosures for use by companies in providing information to lenders, insurers, investors and other stakeholders.”

In essence, this group of foreign bureaucrats are poised to require US companies to adhere to their version of climate disclosures.

The requirements go far beyond disclosures required by U.S. regulatory bodies. FSB chair Mark Carney, in his speech proposing creation of the Task Force said:  “A market in the transition to a 2 degree world can be built.”

His cover letter to the draft recommendations stated: “Widespread adoption of the recommendations…will…speed the transition to a low-carbon economy.”

In response:

  • IHS Markit Vice-Chairman Daniel Yergin, said, “The proposal’s materiality recommendations could start to turn an important financial regulation aspect into climate management.”
  • IHS Markit Vice-Pres. Andrea Bullard, also said, “The FSB proposal assigns a special status to climate-related risk and recommends making it a financial disclosure requirement.”
  • “Brian O’Shea, senior director at the US Chamber’s Center for Capital Markets Competitiveness, said the proposal actually recommends moves to accelerate a global transition to a low-carbon economy instead of providing material information to investors.”

(Except where noted, quotations are from the IHS report referenced below.)

The FSB is proposing that U.S. companies be forced to provide detailed information about climate risks; risks that cannot be readily defined and are subject to huge uncertainties.

Forcing U.S. companies to adhere to the FSB requirements that go beyond U.S. government regulations, will subject U.S. companies to constant legal harassment.

Earlier, in 2015, this was the headline to a Wall Street Journal article: “How Foreigners Became America’s Financial Regulators”

The article said: “The authority of this board [FSB] should be of pressing concern to Congress and the American public, both for its effect on the U.S. financial system and more so on the power of Congress under the U.S. Constitution.”

It also quoted Mark Carney, Chairman of the FSB, who, in a memorandum to its members, which includes the United States, said: “FSB’s decisions must receive ‘full, consistent and prompt implementation’ in member nations.”

George Washington could not have envisioned the modern world, where technologies have forced once distant peoples to intermingle, but his original warning of foreign entanglements should still be respected.

At the root of the current entanglement is the UNFCCC treaty, ratified by the Senate in 1992, which has now culminated in the Paris Accord, and which, in turn, has resulted in proposed international regulations by the FSB that will affect all U.S. companies and imperil America’s economy.

The UNFCCC treaty has created a web that has entangled the United States in an accord inimical to its interests, where foreign bureaucrats, and foreign governments which conspire to subvert the United States, are now in a position dictate what Americans are allowed to do.

The simplest and easiest way to begin to untangle this web is by withdrawing from the UNFCCC treaty.

(Emphasis throughout has been added.)

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From George Washington’s Farewell Speech:

“It is our true policy to steer clear of permanent alliances with any portion of the foreign world; so far, I mean, as we are now at liberty to do it; for let me not be understood as capable of patronizing infidelity to existing engagements. I hold the maxim no less applicable to public than to private affairs, that honesty is always the best policy. I repeat it, therefore, let those engagements be observed in their genuine sense. But, in my opinion, it is unnecessary and would be unwise to extend them.”

“Taking care always to keep ourselves by suitable establishments on a respectable defensive posture, we may safely trust to temporary alliances for extraordinary emergencies.”

IHS report is available here.