How Republicans Are ‘Weaponizing’ Public Office Against Climate Action


Like Ms. Omarova, Ms. Raskin withdrew her nomination. “Sarah was subject to baseless attacks from industry and conservative interest groups,” Mr. Biden mentioned in an announcement.

The treasurers have additionally set their sights on new federal guidelines and laws supposed to strengthen the federal government’s means to behave on local weather change.

Late final yr, the State Financial Officers Foundation labored with the Heritage Foundation to answer proposals from the Financial Stability Oversight Council, a authorities panel assigned to reduce danger within the monetary sector, on methods to scale back the threats posed by local weather change, data present.

And quickly after that, Mr. Oaks, the Utah treasurer, drafted a letter opposing a possible Department of Labor rule that will permit retirement plans to contemplate dangers from international warming of their funding technique. Mr. Kreifels distributed the draft to the inspiration’s members, and greater than a dozen treasurers signed the ultimate letter. The Department of Labor has not determined whether or not to implement the rule.

This yr, the treasurers focused the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency. After the company proposed a rule to require banks to contemplate climate-related monetary danger, executives from the Heritage Foundation despatched Mr. Kreifels and Mr. Oaks a memo outlining their opposition. Within weeks, dozens of state treasurers and attorneys basic from Republican-led states submitted feedback objecting to the proposed rule.

“This special concern for and attention to climate-related risks is irrational,” one remark learn.

And in May, Mr. Kreifels organized a name with the treasurers to debate laws proposed by the Securities and Exchange Commission that will require corporations to publicly disclose local weather dangers to traders. The featured visitor was a consultant from the American Petroleum Institute, the lobbying arm of the fossil gas trade.

The subsequent month, the State Financial Officers Foundation despatched a 20-page letter signed by greater than a dozen treasurers, calling the S.E.C.’s proposed rule, which has not but been enacted, “irrational climate exceptionalism, elevating climate issues to a place of prominence in disclosures that they do not deserve.”

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