Kentucky Rep. Andy Barr told House Financial Services Subcommittee on Financial Institutions and Monetary Policy that groups forming climate-based regulations aren't being transparent, he said during a hearing on July 18.
“There is little transparency about regulators’ climate efforts and what occurs in Administration-led climate working groups or international global governance organizations," he said in a release. "Four bills have been attached to this hearing to address this lack of transparency and regulatory capture. There is also lack of transparency about funding of some of the climate-related efforts of the international organizations, including a tangled web of financing associated with the Network of Central Banks and Supervisors for Greening the Financial System, or NGFS."
The committee hearing discussed federal regulatory involvement in Banks and other financial institutions, the release said. During the discussions, Barr said that in order to handle financial risks designated as “climate-related," federal guidelines have been established, especially by the Federal Reserve which has enacted a “mandatory supervisory climate scenario analysis." The release said Fed Chair Janet Yellen, who also heads the Financial Stability Oversight Council (FSOC), called climate change an “existential crisis," an attitude Barr suggested leads regulatory bodies to incorporate climate policies into banking regulation.
Barr said it was strange for the federal government to be so invested in regulatory activity related to climate change, adding that climate risk analysis is full of uncertainty, and he expressed doubts as to the effectiveness of a public analysis superseding that of the private sector, as many banks already study climate risks independently.
“Regulators are saying that their efforts are intended to ‘help’ banks manage risks that are not yet fully understood, even by the regulators, with the underlying premise that somehow the prudential regulators know better than the private sector," he said.
Barr, a Republican, serves Kentucky’s sixth district, and is also a member of the Indo-Pacific Subcommittee of the Foreign Affairs Committee, and Select Committee on China, according to his website.
