In a major victory to protect America’s land and resources, an SEC proposed rule to authorize the creation of a completely new investment class known as a “Natural Asset Company” (NAC) was withdrawn, after pushback from congressional representatives, state authorities, and the public.
The Natural Asset Company scheme aimed to monetize and maintain management authority over America’s natural assets, enabling private entities – including globalist organizations and foreign adversaries – to invest in NACs for the purpose of driving U.S. natural resources, which contribute to the food, water and energy supplies that sustain America’s economy and our citizens, out of production.
While the withdrawal of the SEC’s proposed rule is a significant win for our freedom and security, the battle against globalists and foreign powers aiming to take down America and its people from within continues.
The Background
The Rockefeller-founded Intrinsic Exchange Group (IEG) in partnership with the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) – which is an investor in IEG, submitted a proposal for the creation of Natural Asset Companies, after which the SEC issued a proposed rule for the authorization of this new investment vehicle.
Natural Asset Companies, as defined by the SEC, are “Corporations that hold the rights to the ecological performance of a defined area and have the authority to manage the areas for conservation, restoration, or sustainable management.” By definition, Natural Asset Companies manage and control natural assets for sustainability, which restricts the productive uses of natural resources on lands enrolled into NACs.
“Critically, activities not allowed [on lands enrolled into NACs] would include anything considered unsustainable, things such as mineral extraction, industrial agriculture – which really means agriculture that uses traditional fertilizers and machinery, oil extraction, grazing, hunting, and other recreational activities not considered sustainable,” Utah State Treasurer Marlo Oaks explained.
The proposed rule would have authorized federal and state public lands as well as conservation easements on private lands to be enrolled into NACs and would have given management authority of the assets within the NACs to their corporate boards.
Meanwhile, the Biden regime has taken steps to prepare for the enrollment of federal lands into NACs, including the establishment of conservation leases under the Bureau of Land Management’s proposed conservation rule, which could have prohibited oil and gas production as well as cattle grazing on millions of acres of public lands leased by the federal government.
If the Bureau of Land Management issued conservation leases to NACs that took precedence over leases for economic activity, such as oil extraction or grazing, then “not long thereafter, all non-sustainable activity ceases on the land,” according to Utah State Treasurer, Marlo Oaks.
More than 23 million acres of public lands and 12 million acres of public waters were under lease by the oil and gas industry as of 2022. And the Bureau of Land Management oversees leases for livestock grazing on 155 million acres of federal lands.
The plan to unconstitutionally cede management authority of federal lands to NACs was in conjunction with a broader initiative by the Biden administration, referred to as 30×30, to conserve at least 30 percent of all U.S. lands and waters by 2030.
“It’s an international agenda to permanently protect 30 percent of the world’s land and oceans… These are lands that are off limits to human use. That’s the ultimate objective… This is all based on the climate crisis narrative,” remarked Margaret Byfield of the American Stewards of Liberty.
Margaret Byfield estimated that when 30×30 was initiated in the United States, about 12 percent, or approximately 300 million acres of American lands were highly protected, while the administration seeks to add another 400 million acres by 2030 to achieve their goal.
According to Byfield, the lands that make up the first 12 percent include “national parks, state parks, wilderness areas, national wildlife refuges, and importantly – conservation easements on private land.” American Stewards of Liberty has warned farmers and ranchers that enrollment of their lands into conservation easements is a “primary tool to move private lands into the 30×30 program.”
Likewise, conservation easements were targeted for enrollment into NACs, without the landowners’ knowledge or consent, providing an investment vehicle for nefarious private interests to restrict farming and squeeze landowners into buyouts. Intrinsic Exchange Group has claimed that, through NACs, management and conservation of natural resources is “perhaps even more valuable” than food production.
Marlo Oaks, presented a scenario in which a farmer enrolled his private land into a conservation easement, and “without the landowner’s knowledge, the USDA land trust enrolls the conservation easement into a NAC.” In this scenario, “the NAC now holds the rights to the ecosystem services represented by the conservation easement on the farmer’s private land. The NAC allows farming as long as it is regenerative farming. Only organic fertilizer and no traditional machinery are allowed.”
Oaks went on to explain that “because of the drop in crop yields and the increased cost of organic fertilizer, the farmer is effectively put out of business. The land the farmer thought he owned and would preserve for farming is now of little value to his children. In a bid to salvage some economic value, the farmer sells the land to the NAC at a fraction of what it was worth before he encumbered the land with the easement.”
Catherine Austin Fitts emphasized the dangers of conservation easements in a recent Financial Rebellion episode, stating, “You have a world of people who have put easements on their property… and they have no idea that they are running the risk that their private ownership interests in this land are, not just restricted, but could get hijacked.”
The Utah State Treasurer warned that NACs would inevitably result in “a meaningful contraction in agricultural yield, beef supply, and oil and natural gas production,” leading America to become “more dependent on hostile regimes for necessary life-sustaining goods.”
Furthermore, foreign investors such as China along with globalist entities like BlackRock, would have been permitted to create Natural Asset Companies or hold shares in them under the SEC’s proposed rule.
“What better way for a foreign adversary to cripple the United States than through locking up natural resources without a fight?” Marlo Oaks suggested, adding that, “The climate crisis narrative has reached a dangerous point, where proponents seem willing to starve and freeze people to death, so they don’t die from climate change.”
The Pushback
American Stewards of Liberty was the first organization to identify the threat of NACs and notify policymakers. Shortly after the SEC quietly issued their proposed rule in October of 2023 – providing an extraordinarily brief timeframe of 21 days for public comment, senators sent a letter to the SEC raising their concerns. The response from congressional representatives and the pubic led the SEC to delay their decision on the proposed rule from November 18, 2023, to January 2, 2024.
By December 15, 2023, Representative Hageman and 31 congressional representatives sent a letter to the SEC demanding answers to their questions and calling for an extension of the comment period. A coalition of 23 state financial officers led by Utah Treasurer Marlo Oaks also issued a letter to the SEC in December arguing that the authorization of NACs would devastate their states.
Then on January 9, 2024, more than two dozen state attorneys general submitted a letter to the SEC warning that the proposed rule violated the Constitution, the Administrative Procedure Act, as well as federal securities laws.
Facing significant pressure from federal and state officials as well as the public, the SEC’s comment period was extended to January 18, 2024. According to American Stewards of Liberty, of the 2,086 public comments submitted, 99 percent were opposed to NACs.
During this timeframe, the Financial Services Committee, which has oversight authority of the SEC, refused to investigate the SEC’s proposed rule, according to Margaret Byfield. However, on January 11, 2024, members of the Natural Resources Committee initiated a probe.
“They did what the Financial Services Committee should have done,” she said, adding that, “I think that was kind of the last straw, that SEC and NYSE knew now it was all going to be exposed. It wasn’t going to happen quietly. The states were ready to sue.”
One day ahead of the close of the comment period, on January 17, 2024, the SEC announced the withdrawal of the proposed rule change.
Margaret Byfield explained that “most people don’t even realize” how “very, very close we were to the absolute fleecing of America’s property rights.” Byfield went on to warn that “this is round one.”
Catherine Austin Fitts concurred, adding that “there are many rounds” in this battle to control America’s land, resources, and citizens. Fitts is calling for 2024 to be the year of “Operation Pushback.”
The Battle Continues
While the SEC’s proposed rule to authorize NACs has been withdrawn for now, the Biden regime’s globalist agenda to sell out American lands, natural resources, and freedoms continues.
American Stewards of Liberty is shifting their focus now to the White House’s strategy to create Natural Capital Accounts, which they describe as the “twin sister” to Natural Asset Companies. They say the strategy “represents a whole-of-government approach to monetize ‘natural processes’ and ‘ecosystem services’ and add them to the federal balance sheet for more nefarious and sinister future plans.”
Natural Capital Accounts, as Margaret Byfield explained in a recent webinar, are a way of collecting data on natural processes – like the air we breathe, assigning value and monetizing those natural processes, then recording them on the national balance sheet to inform policy and regulatory decisions by the government.
In January of 2023, the Biden regime issued a report on a “U.S. System of Natural Capital Accounting and Associated Environmental Economic Statistics,” which admits that the data collection on natural processes may be a pretext for taxes and fees associated with the usage of ecosystem services. It states that, “over the long term, natural capital accounts could influence tax policies and revenue and resources available to the Federal Government.”
The framework for Natural Capital Accounting, driven by the United Nations and the World Bank, has been developed over decades and implemented in several nations in coordination with key partners. In fact, the Coalition of Finance Ministers for Climate Action, which is a collaboration of financial policymakers in more than 90 countries led by the World Bank and International Monetary Fund (IMF), has focused their efforts to “mainstream climate change into economic, fiscal and financial policies” in nations around the world, using the data from Natural Capital Accounting to inform policy decisions on “implementing environmental taxes, tradable permits, and payments for ecosystem services programs.”
“What does it mean when we financialize mother nature? What happens when we assign value to natural processes like photosynthesis – the very processes that make life possible? Or when we place a value on clean air that we breathe? Isn’t the next step to charge a fee for using these ecosystem services? What gets measured, gets managed,” warned Utah Treasurer Marlo Oaks.
Aside from the dangers that Natural Capital Accounting poses to our freedom and prosperity, Margaret Byfield cautions that Biden’s 30×30 program will continue to threaten personal property rights and individual liberties. “What’s important about this agenda to know is its purpose. They say it’s to conserve lands to save humanity from the climate crisis, but its purpose is to clear title to the lands, to consolidate the ownership of lands among the environmental organizations and governments… It’s trying to extinguish the property rights of the middle class,” she stated.
While the government owns about 40 percent of America’s land at the local, state and federal levels, the remaining 60 percent is privately owned, she explained. “That has been a real trouble spot for them… the middle class still owns the majority of the land in America.” Byfield again reiterated that conservation easements and conservation programs are key to the administration’s attempts to shift privately owned lands into the 30×30 program.
“How do we fight this? How do we really stop this?” Margaret Byfield asked, replying, “The people have to own the land and the natural resources. We have to protect property rights. We need to reverse this trend of government and collectivist ownership of private property rights.”
“The environmental movement has never, ever been about whether we are going to use the resources. It has always been about who is going to use the resources,” Byfield said in closing, adding that, “We either own property, or we are property… Ultimately, if they can control our land, they can control our property, they can control the people.”
American Stewards of Liberty has been, and will continue to be, at the forefront of this fight. For more information and ways to support their organization, visit their website here.