OPINION:
Beware. President Donald Trump may have put a stop to America’s participation in the Paris accord, citing its burdensome regulatory climate change mandates and cost-hiking economic downers.
But a plot afoot at the Paris climate summit would moot Trump’s action and make most of America a participant in the accord, anyway.
Climate Action 100+ tweeted the news: “225 investors with $26.3 trillion [in assets] just announced @ActOnClimate100 at #OnePlanet to drive action on #climatechange by 100 of the world’s largest corporate #GHG [greenhouse gas] emitters.”
The fund managers are also going to use their financial influence to compel companies to disclose — voluntarily, of course — all their financial information as it relates to climate change.
In other words: Investors, flush with trillions of dollars in cash — and unhappy that Trump pulled America out of the Paris accord over the summer — are going to pressure companies to do what the political world, under Republican leadership, wouldn’t. Which is to say that the private sector is going to be strong-armed into accepting pretty much what the Paris accord would’ve instilled by way of regulation — only this time around, it’ll be billed as voluntary, not regulatory.
It’s kind of how the unions operate, demanding “voluntary” contributions as a condition of employment, and then using those monies to elect Democratic candidates and further progressive policies. As a matter of fact, the group of investment funds includes the California Public Employees’ Retirement System, the largest public pension fund in the United States.
And they’re targeting, at least initially, the top 100 greenhouse gas emitting corporations in the world.
Here’s the goal: “Anne Simpson, investment director of sustainability at CalPERS, said getting major energy and transportation companies to align their future plans with the goals of the 2015 Paris accord could spur action across all sectors as companies seek to avoid being ’left behind’ by investors,” The Washington Post reported.
Blackballed is a better word.
The message from the carrot-holders will be this: Comply with our climate change regulatory demands or we’ll hit you with the stick of negative PR and no money.
This is far-left infiltration into U.S. sovereignty via the side-door corporate world. And it comes as a preponderance of states — 38, according for former Secretary of State John Kerry, who spoke at this Paris conference — and more than 50 mayors around the nation, have also pledged to put into effect the very same Paris accord measures that Trump deemed as punishing to the U.S. economy.
What’s worse is that Americans don’t even get to vote.
This is all special-agenda driven, beneath a cover of private sector darkness. And yet, the effect will be the same as if it came via the government — that is, implementation of a damaging regulatory control on America’s political and private sectors that will stymy growth, hike energy prices and spread a socialist share-the-wealth disease even further. Capitalism, the kind envisioned by free societies, will be strangled and choked in the process.
The way out?
Americans can fight back by supporting those companies that don’t cave — and by boycotting those companies that do. It’s called fighting fire with fire; public pressure with public pressure.
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