Trump’s SEC Axes Emissions Reporting Rule, as Quid Pro Quo Continues Apace

Last March, Wright’s company Liberty Energy filed a lawsuit challenging the SEC’s newly passed rule. In a statement then, Wright called it “arbitrary and capricious” — a rule that Biden’s SEC chair Gary Gensler said would “provide investors with consistent, comparable, and decision-useful information.” Also among its primary detractors was Harold Hamm and his company Continental Resources — the man who led the charge in response to Trump’s demand for a billion dollars from the oil industry.

Trump has been enthusiastic in his oil boosterism since taking office, issuing a flurry of executive orders directly and explicitly designed to increase the flow of oil and more or less let the companies involved do whatever they want without consequence.

The SEC rule was substantially watered down before it ever made it past the SEC, with a partisan vote of 3-2. Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, who had pushed for companies to be required to disclose climate change- and emissions-related risks, blamed the weakened rule on an “onslaught of corporate lobbying.” And lo, the lobbying has now fully paid off, with acting SEC chair Mark Uyeda moving to pull it off the table, even pending the existing litigation.

“The Rule is deeply flawed and could inflict significant harm on the capital markets and our economy,” Uyeda said in a statement. In this case “economy” and “markets” is just euphemism for “oil industry,” and specifically “oil industry executives,” since nothing Trump does will force the companies to actually hire more workers if they don’t feel like it.