Anyone who tracks the efforts of environmentalists can see that their policies often have an ulterior motive. These policies neither result in a better society nor do they produce better habitats. Their policy preferences never consider how using the land improves the land for man and wildlife. Instead, many environmentalists advocate for policies at the expense of anyone who creates usable, tangible, societal benefits from the land. What are environmentalists really after? Power and money.
The Securities and Exchange Commission and the New York Stock Exchange are quietly working on a rule that may prove this ulterior motive.
Last year, the SEC proposed a rule that would create an entirely new type of company called a Natural Asset Company, which would “hold the rights to ecological performance.” These companies would be given license to control lands, both public and private, and would be required not to conduct any “unsustainable activities, such as mining, that lead to the degradation of the ecosystems.” In effect, this means that these companies would somehow seek to profit off the lands without using the lands. Whatever they do, it must be “sustainable.”
How might a company make control of land profitable while not using the land? The method is confusing, perhaps intentionally. They profit from “ecological performance” such as “conservation, restoration, or sustainable management.” These NACs would quantify and monetize these natural outputs (such as air or water). The best comparison would be using the air we breathe as a cryptocurrency of sorts. These natural assets that collectively belong to all of us would now belong to corporations run by environmental special interests.
Another feature of these new companies is that the land belonging to sovereign nations or private landowners can be subject to NAC control. The United States could offer lands to private investors, including those outside the U.S. China could invest in an NAC and be a stakeholder in our national parks. Russia could assume control of lands currently leased to produce oil and place them off limits.
The Biden administration has already suggested that it would cede this power to the NACs. The Office of Science and Technology Policy has also created a method to track the values of nature and place those so-called natural assets onto the federal balance sheet. It described this effort as “the transition we need for sustainable growth and development, a stable climate, and a healthy planet.” The Bureau of Land Management and U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service are also facilitating the enrollment of our federal lands into NACs.
Private landowners would, possibly even involuntarily, also be ceding their control of land to NACs, who would in turn require them to use the land in a “sustainable” way. NACs would prevent any productive use of the land, which would hurt the landowners financially, but also reduce the supply of minerals, food, and other goods that come from the land.
Even the traditional methods of regulatory oversight and accounting standards have to change to make NACs possible. NACs would not withstand scrutiny under generally accepted accounting principles. Rather, a new accounting framework would be created by the Intrinsic Exchange Group.
These efforts intentionally prioritize environmentalism over human flourishing. IEG admits that “producing these essential goods and services and managing resources wisely is as valuable, or perhaps even more valuable, than the food production.”
IEG has stated that the NAC economy will be four times larger than today’s entire economy. Handing rights to America’s greatest national treasures — along with the air we breathe — to wealthy special interests is a bad idea.