Listen, without business, we could live in a world without emissions. I mean without business and China and India we could...
The L James I have a dream speech: "I dream that someday everyone will move out of NYC and Manhattan can be returned to its rightful owners...to open a new Casino".
The Letitia James Anti-Business Business Model
The New York AG sues a meat company because it sells too much meat.
By The Editorial Board, WSJ
March 5, 2024
New York Gov. Kathy Hochul declared the state wouldn’t target businesses with political cases after winning a $454 million judgment against Donald Trump. That vow didn’t last long. Last week Attorney General Letitia James charged the world’s largest beef producer, JBS USA, with misrepresenting its carbon emissions.
“The JBS Group has profited from its fraudulent and illegal business activities across New York State,” the AG claims in a lawsuit filed in state court. Pray tell, how? Her argument is that eating beef is bad for the climate, and that JBS duped consumers into buying its products by making overly ambitious pledges to cut emissions. Seriously. That’s the case.
“Beef has the highest total greenhouse gas emissions of any major food commodity,” the lawsuit notes, and livestock production contributes about 32% of anthropogenic methane emissions each year. JBS says it plans to become “net zero” by 2040. But Ms. James complains that JBS didn’t quantify its so-called Scope 3 emissions from suppliers and customers. In any case, neither New York nor federal law says companies must disclose their greenhouse-gas emissions.
The politically ambitious AG also says the company’s emissions goals are incompatible with its plan to increase meat production. “The JBS Group forecasts increased demand for its products over the coming decades, and it intends to meet that demand,” the lawsuit says. So in her view the company’s offense is doing what it is in business to do—producing meat to satisfy growing public demand.
JBS’s emissions will invariably increase, Ms. James argues, because commercial technology doesn’t exist to reduce methane from cow burps. Buying carbon allowances to offset JBS’s emissions would also be inordinately expensive. She’s right that they wouldn’t be cheap, but the same criticisms applies to New York state’s net-zero pledge.
If JBS committed fraud, so have Democrats who control Albany. Ditto the climate lobby, which has misrepresented that the world can achieve “net zero” merely by banishing fossil fuels. Sorry, that won’t be enough. People will also have to eat a lot less meat, among other coerced sacrifices.
Ms. James charged JBS with violating the state’s Executive Law Section 63(12), the same law she used to sue Donald Trump for allegedly defrauding banks by inflating his assets. Courts have interpreted the sweeping law to provide for disgorgement of “ill-gotten gains” even when there are no victims who lost money.
Ms. James argues that JBS’s climate promises enabled it to sell more meat and charge more for it. “One study found that consumers are willing to pay more—up to 30 percent more—for products with net-zero greenhouse gas emissions,” the lawsuit says. So JBS could be on the hook for profits it made from selling meat in the state.
Proceeds from the lawsuit would go to the state, as will the recent $454 million judgment against Mr. Trump and his company. New York is struggling to pay for growing Medicaid and migrant care. Ms. James’s response is to loot businesses that are unpopular with the left. Who’s next?
On Thursday she announced an investigation into AT&T over last week’s cell-service outage. In November she sued PepsiCo for selling food in single-use plastic packaging without warning consumers about “the known and foreseeable risks that follow from the intended use and foreseeable misuse”—i.e., litter.
Ms. James’s political business model is suing companies for doing business she doesn’t like. Her JBS lawsuit also illustrates how the left plans to exploit the Securities and Exchange Commission’s proposed climate disclosure rule. Companies will be forced to report their emissions publicly, which will open them up to suits by plaintiff attorneys and politicians for alleged misrepresentations. What a racket.
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