On Sunday, the US Senate passed the largest climate investment plan in US history. Some 370 billion dollars to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 40% by 2030, and a “victory” for Joe Biden, after 18 months of tough negotiations with his camp. Faithful to their pronounced opposition to the Democrats, all elected Republicans voted against this bill, which should also make it possible to limit inflation.
Like abortion, the climate is one of the issues that divides the United States, giving rise to a major political conflict between Democrats and Republicans. A few weeks after the Supreme Court of the United States reduced the capacity of the Environmental Protection Agency, the main federal watchdog on the subject, an investigation by the New York Times revealed how some thirty American state treasurers have joined forces to unravel the ecological transition at work.
Against the climate commitments of the country, one of the first emitters of CO2 per capita, these members of the Republicans, often close to Trump, used their prerogatives to sanction in a coordinated way the American companies which participated “too much”, according to them, in decarbonization. of industry and the local economy supported by Joe Biden and initiated by Barack Obama.
Associated to Documenteda financial investigation consortium, the New York Times thus going through more than 10,000 internal documents and e-mails from an influence network called the State financial officers foundation (SFOF), to which the US treasurers under investigation subscribe. In a series of articles published since August 5, the newspaper details methods qualified as “aggressive”, symptomatic of the legal-technical confrontation which is taking place between Democrats and Republicans.
Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan…too green?
Symbol of the cleavage that agitates the country, among the targeted companies are even giants of American finance. Better known for their business acumen than for their environmental commitment or their sense of ethical investment, they are nevertheless considered too “green”, and punished for having worked for the “woke ideology”, by operating their ecological transition.
The treasurers affiliated with the SFOF notably threatened the principal American investment banks Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan to deprive them of public contracts if they did not invest more in coal, a source of energy particularly emitting greenhouse gases. Other treasurers agreed to withdraw more than $700 million in public investment from BlackRock, the world’s leading investment house, saying the company was focusing too much on environmental issues.
Asked about the pressure brought to the private sector to abandon its ecological transition, the Republican treasurers declared that they wanted to “preserve human development and the fossil industry”, sources of local jobs. “We now have banks that refuse to lend to oil and fossil companies. These policies affect all Americans,” West Virginia Treasurer Riley Moore told the conservative Fox News on August 1.
Since the American Supreme Court, with a Republican majority, suppressed the Roe V. Wade judgment recognizing the right to abortion at the federal level, the Democrats and the Republicans have been clashing with legal and political initiatives. Latest, this Californian law allowing American citizens to earn up to 10,000 dollars if they win a lawsuit against those they consider to be carriers of prohibited weapons. A copied and pasted text of a Texas law restricting abortion. In the United States, many observers fear that this political-legal confrontation will intensify, at the risk of paralyzing the country.