Government Land Grabs, from ‘Natural Asset Companies’ to Agenda 2030: Margaret Byfield

[FULL TRANSCRIPT BELOW] “They’re trying to create this new asset class … and they get to arbitrarily decide how much they are valued. So, it’s not that the marketplace is going to value them. It’s going to be a bureaucrat sitting in a room saying that the air you breathe is worth X, and the air I breathe is worth Y.”

Margaret Byfield was raised on a 7,000-acre ranch in Nevada. For nearly 30 years, her family fought the federal government to maintain ownership of their property and its resources. But ultimately, the government prevailed.

“The federal government was never supposed to own the land. In fact, that was one of the big conflicts after our Revolutionary War,” says Ms. Byfield.

Today, she is executive director of American Stewards of Liberty, working to protect the production of food, fiber, minerals, and energy from agendas that seek to erode individual property rights.

“Agendas like 30 by 30, well it’s going to really harm our food production. How are we going to feed our nation and the world? Well, that’s not a problem to them because their belief is there are too many of us and therefore this is just the way to get rid of part of us through starvation,” she says. “Either you have the right to own property, or you are property.”

We discuss Natural Asset Companies, ecosystem services, the United Nations’ sustainable goals, and other government land grabs being carried out in the name of conservation and protecting the environment.

“Fifty percent of the West is owned by the federal government. So, the East is privately settled, which is how our country was supposed to be settled,” says Ms. Byfield.

Views expressed in this video are opinions of the host and the guest, and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.

FULL TRANSCRIPT

Jan Jekielek:
Margaret Byfield, such a pleasure to have you on American Thought Leaders.

Margaret Byfield:
Thank you for having me.

Mr. Jekielek:
Let’s start with natural asset companies. The proposal to establish this new system of natural asset companies was defeated, and this has been celebrated as a victory. Please explain to us what exactly this is, why it’s important, and where we’re at today.

Ms. Byfield:
In September of 2021, the New York Stock Exchange partnered with a group called the Intrinsic Exchange Group [IEG], that was started and funded by the Rockefeller Foundation. IEG is really supported and funded by the same entities that are pushing the climate crisis narrative, the 30 by 30 agenda, and net zero decarbonization. These are all agendas that will lock up the land and lock up our productivity.

They are the entities that push the creation of this new vehicle that would be listed on the New York Stock Exchange called a natural asset company.
This would allow for the enrollment of our protected resources into these companies, along with the natural processes called the ecosystem services that can be enrolled in these companies, and then private entities. In other words, the same people who are pushing the agenda to lock up our protected land would then be the investors in the private vehicle where these are enrolled and be able to profit off of them.

It was a very scary proposal. It was a stealth attempt to gain control over American land and resources, and it was done very quietly. The SEC [U.S. Securities & Exchange Commission] issued the proposed rule October 4th, 2023, and allowed only for 21 days of comment. Then they were going to make their decision on November 18th, 2023, to list these natural asset companies. That would have started something that would have been extremely detrimental to our nation.

Mr. Jekielek:
For those of us that aren’t familiar with the terminology, you mentioned ecosystem enrollment, which seems very abstract. What are we talking about here?

Ms. Byfield:
They have come up with something they call ecosystem services. They are trying to value the land with the natural processes created by nature and put it into the traditional principles of property and how you acquire property. It’s not man’s hand working the land to create a product. This is what nature does with or without us. They are trying to monetize this and quantify this.

Think of things like pollination, photosynthesis, clean air, clean water, and water filtration. They are saying, “There’s a value there that we are not quantifying.” That’s what would be enrolled in these natural asset companies. Then the investors would control these processes, which would then control the actual land. When you first start talking about this, most people will say, “What are you talking about? This sounds crazy.”

When I first started reading about it and digging into it, I didn’t talk about it, because they would think a crazy lady was saying this, because it really doesn’t make sense. But this is exactly what they were trying to do, and we were within days of it actually happening in America.

Mr. Jekielek:
Who actually has the ownership and who confers the ownership? This is the foundational question. For instance, with pollination, we need the bees to do the pollination work for the natural systems to function. Who can own that in the first place, and who gets to transfer that ownership? Please clarify that for us.

Ms. Byfield:
Yes, it depends on who owns the land. In this SEC proposed rule, it was stated very clearly that those ecosystem services in our national parks could be enrolled in these natural asset companies, so that would be the federal government enrolling them. It also said in the proposed rule that these natural asset companies could be created by the government.

A lot of the private lands have federal conservation programs on them or conservation easements held in perpetuity by land trusts. Now, those easements are a separate right, and it’s a development right. You can go to the Nature Conservancy’s balance sheet and you will see a line item on their balance sheet of what they own worldwide, and it’s billions of dollars worth of conservation easements. That’s a separate right that they can enroll with or without the landowner’s consent.

Mr. Jekielek:
Is it not obvious what rights a conservation group would have to the land?

Ms. Byfield:
There hasn’t been a landowner that thought they were selling their ecosystem service rights, because that is something new created out of thin air. That’s what’s so crazy about trying to understand this. Our marketplace is based on what a consumer will buy and what they won’t. That’s what drives our marketplace. This is not something that people will buy or not buy, and that’s what’s really unique about what they’re doing.

They’re trying to create this new class of assets, and they get to arbitrarily decide how much they are valued. It’s not the marketplace that is going to value them. It’s going to be a bureaucrat sitting in a room saying that the air you breathe is worth X and that the air I breathe is worth Y, so it’s all arbitrary. That’s why it’s hard to wrap your head around what they were trying to do.

They say by the act of conserving the land, they are increasing those natural processes like pollination, clean air, and photosynthesis. Therefore, it is the work of the land trust or the federal government protecting the lands to create this new value and increase the ecosystem services.

Mr. Jekielek:
You’re telling me this isn’t private ownership anymore. You’re telling me that it is these conservation trusts, which typically would be NGOs, or the actual federal government that are suddenly creating this value and holding it. This is all very abstract. What exactly is happening here?

Ms. Byfield:
Let’s go back a little bit. This concept of valuing natural processes really began in the 1980s with the United Nations. They are the first to really start asking, “How do we value these processes?” To give you some perspective, I’ve been involved in these issues for over 30 years. I was born into these battles. My family had a case against the federal government and I learned a lot about the environmental movement during that process because they came to take our land.

You have to understand the environmental movement is not about whether or not we’re going to use the resources. It’s about who is going to use the resources. That’s really the big fight that is playing out here. The United Nations and the World Economic Forum have been pursuing this for years.

Mr. Jekielek:
It makes sense to say that the process of pollination has intrinsic value. If someone were to pollute and destroy that process, there should be a cost for doing that. That’s how I always understood these types of ideas coming out of the UN.

Ms. Byfield:
What you’re talking about are externalities. In financial terms, they’ve always considered these parts and its influence on the actual product being consumed. They call them externalities. They just have never monetized it before. That’s not something that was ever appropriate, nor should it be so today.

It’s not that the value was never considered in this. The step that the UN and the natural asset companies in America were trying to accomplish was monetizing these for the first time ever and putting a value on them. Then they say that if you monetize them, then somebody can own them.

Mr. Jekielek:
There have been large corporations polluting the natural environment. You would put a value on there so you could say to that company, “You’ve just made a ton of money for yourself, but you’ve actually destroyed the environment in the process. You should have to pay for that destruction or somehow mitigate it.”

Ms. Byfield:
Yes. There are nuisance laws on the books where you can’t do anything with your property that harms your neighbor’s property. Humans are imperfect, so we are going to have those issues. If you look at the history of that, those things can be solved. We already have lots of laws on the books that do that. This next step was for profit, it was not to solve that problem.

Mr. Jekielek:
Let’s hear about your background to understand where you’re coming from. Financial asset companies seemed to appear out of nowhere. But this has been developing for a while, and you’ve been looking at this for decades.
Please tell us about your journey.

Ms. Byfield:
I was raised on a ranch in Nevada, a pretty large sized acreage of 1,100 square miles. We were a medium-sized ranch in Nevada. It takes about 50 acres to feed a cow, so that takes a lot of land. Unless you live in the West, people don’t understand that 50 percent of the West is owned by the federal government.

The East is privately settled, which is how our country was supposed to be settled. The federal government was never supposed to own the land. In fact, that was one of the big conflicts after our Revolutionary War. The states were going to put all of their land into one pot and sell it off because they didn’t trust the federal government.They didn’t want the federal government holding onto the land.

All of this acreage was disposed of and settled by the people until you got to the West, and that’s when politics changed. There’s a whole story of how that happened. The end result is that 50 percent of the land in the West is owned by the federal government. The West is federalized. In the state of Nevada where I grew up, 87 percent of the land is government-owned.

Our ranch of 1,100 square miles was a grazing operation. We owned all the grazing rights and the water and we had 7,000 private deeded acres. But because we owned all that water, the U.S. Forest Service filed an application over our water rights. If we were to abandon our water rights, they would be next in line to acquire those and then use their regulatory powers to basically drive us out of business.

That was what they were doing. This began in 1978, so we’re talking a long time ago. We fought them for 13 years and won every round, except that we really didn’t get any resolution. They would come back and do the same thing to us the next time. So finally, in 1991, my parents filed the first federal lands grazing-taking case against the federal government.

Again, we won every round except the last one. The U.S. claims court awarded us $14.1 million for the taking of our property. Then it was appealed to the U.S. Court of Appeals-D.C. circuit and unfortunately came before three eastern judges who had no concept of the federal lands issues, which are very complex. They really just punted on two technical issues and said we didn’t have standing and ripeness and they kicked the case out.

After 27 years in court, we lost everything. We lost the ranch and were never compensated. The good thing that came out of that is that we had a front seat in the fight. We were on the front lines. We had to understand the people attacking us and why they were after our property. That’s why I grew up with a different understanding of the power of the federal government when they own the land, and how much control they have over the people. I know about that personally.

The second thing is how much power the environmental movement has and what their real agenda is. Most people look at the environmental movement and think they’re trying to save different species and protect open spaces, things that we would all say are great.

Actually, to the real movers and shakers behind the movement, it’s not about that at all. They don’t believe in private property ownership. They don’t believe that you or I could manage a piece of land. They believe that it should be done by a big consolidated network of highly degreed people scientists making the decisions on this land.

Mr. Jekielek:
Why the D.C. Circuit Court? That would be the least relevant court possible in his kind of case. It’s a court that would view the world differently than a Nevada court.

Ms. Byfield:
It is because it was in the U.S. Court of Federal Claims. That’s where you file a taking case and the D.C. Circuit has jurisdiction over that. That’s why it ended up there.

Mr. Jekielek:
That’s curious, so let’s bookmark that. You’re describing a 1,100 square mile ranch. Overnight, your ownership evaporated and there was no recourse.

Ms. Byfield:
Right, the Supreme Court didn’t take the case up. But we need to think about that, too. That was in the period of 1978 through 1991. Our case is a really good illustration of what’s wrong with our system of government because there is a fourth branch of government, and that’s the administrative agencies.

During that period, think of the presidents we had; Carter, Reagan, and Bush. Arguably, we had two conservative presidents during that period that had staffed the departments with very good people. Yet, even though there were good people at the top who would disagree with what the agencies were doing to my family, they really had no way to penetrate that in order to control the agencies to get them to do the right thing and pull them back.

If people really want to drill into what is wrong with the administrative state, there is a really good book that was written by former Secretary of the Interior, David Bernhardt, called You Report to Me. It just came out last year, and he is 100 percent correct. When he was secretary, you learn in that book how little power he really had over the agencies. Congress has acquiesced so much power to these agencies. The courts have facilitated it because they haven’t pulled them back.

Cases that are challenging the Chevron deference are really important right now. Those are things we need to get reversed so that there is some control over the administrative agencies. Congress will write a law like the National Forest Management Act, which gives the U.S. Forest Service the directive to manage the national forests, and then they write regulations on how to implement that.

It’s through that regulatory rulemaking process that they are actually writing law. Congress has delegated that power to them. Then they are also in control of the administrative judges who judge the law. They are the ones who enforce and execute the law.

The administrative agencies have all three of those powers, which our founders worked very hard to make sure were separated in our Constitution. That’s why we have a Congress that makes the law,
a judicial system that judges the law, and an executive branch that executes the law. Those three are separated, and that is what has protected us. All three of those powers come together in those agencies, making them almost untouchable.

For average citizens like my family, who are not wealthy, that are just out there trying to make a living off the land, it’s very, very difficult to fight and win against them. Our story actually got a lot of attention and many people know about it. But we are just one story, and we know that it’s happening to hundreds and hundreds of people in this nation, and has been happening for years.

Mr. Jekielek:
Please explain the 30 by 30 plan. How was the UN looking at these valuations and how has that impacted what is happening here?

Ms. Byfield:
The program called 30 by 30 is an international agenda to permanently protect 30 percent of the world’s land and oceans by 2030. When they say permanently protect, they mean lands that the people cannot utilize. It has actually been implemented in other places, like the Netherlands. Natura 2000 is basically 30 by 30 in the European Union, which has now led to all of the farmer protests that we are seeing now.

Mr. Jekielek:
The farmer protests are about changes in regulation that would prevent the farmers from being able to be successful at farming. Essentially, it would take away their land. How is this 30 by 30 agenda playing a role?

Ms. Byfield:
Yes, 30 by 30 is the agenda, but it’s the implementation that you’re talking about. How are they getting to their goals? In the Netherlands, they are regulating nitrogen emissions. They’re saying there are too many nitrogen emissions, therefore we have to get rid of the cows, therefore we have to get rid of the farmers, and therefore we need 2,000 to 3,000 landowners in the Netherlands to voluntarily sell their land to the federal government. That’s the process.

It took a while for it to take hold in America. They had a hard time figuring out how they were going to do it here because we are different from other nations. We actually own the land. The people own the land, which is how it was intended to be for us as a nation. It’s a lot easier to put the 30 by 30 agenda into a nation where the government already owns the land or there is already that collectivist control over the property in some form.

When President Biden was elected, we were watching the environmental groups and they started talking about the 30 by 30 agenda, so we really dug into it. It was initiated six days after he came into office. He implemented the 30 by 30 agenda through Executive Order 14008.

Mr. Jekielek:
I had then-governor, now-Senator Ricketts on the show about this topic. Can you tell me how successful that movement was? This is something you were involved in from the beginning.

Ms. Byfield:
Yes. He was the first elected leader we sat down with and briefed on the 30 by 30 agenda. He doesn’t look at staff talking points, he actually reads all the material. He had me personally walk him through all the pieces that led to the 30 by 30 agenda. To this day, he has asked me the hardest questions about 30 by 30. He really dug into it so that he had a full-depth understanding of the process.

It bothered him, of course, and so he took a pretty active role in this. He wrote a letter that was signed by 14 other governors to oppose 30 by 30, and he took the position of standing between the federal government and his constituents in Nebraska. In so doing, he led the way for us nationally on the 30 by 30 agenda. That led to it becoming known very quickly as a federal land grab.

Mr. Jekielek:
This sets up a collaboration between the UN and the US federal government. Many of us were not aware of these deep collaborations. It is absolutely an international agenda.

Ms. Byfield:
The Biden administration is really the first administration to go all in with implementing the UN agenda. We’ve had other presidents that have tried to get parts of it into our society. The Biden administration has taken the whole-of-government approach that comes right out of the UN talking points.

It’s not just 30 by 30, natural capital accounts, or some of these other agendas, but also net zero, decarbonization, all these other things that we are fighting. That all comes from the UN. It’s a belief in the globalist agenda, and that means America last. Agenda 2030 is initiated in all these sustainability goals.

The propaganda is this is the way that society and humanity is going to save itself. It stems from the belief that humans, by simply breathing, walking, and using resources are destroying our environment, which makes no sense. Everything that they base the climate crisis agenda on is a model. It’s a prediction of the future.

As a scientist, you know that models can be very useful to help you figure out what area you should study more. But a real scientist does not rely on the results of a model that extrapolates out 20, 30, 50 years into the future to fundamentally change policy and society.

Mr. Jekielek:
There have also been models that did not manifest what they projected.

Ms. Byfield:
Exactly. At the very least you would correct that, which they haven’t done. But it’s about the agenda, it’s not about what is actually happening. The people behind the agenda have the belief that we are overpopulated. When you talk about agendas like 30 by 30, that will really harm our food production. How are we going to feed our nation and the world?

That’s not a problem for them because their belief is there are too many of us anyway, and this is just the way to get rid of some of us through starvation. I know that sounds crazy, but this is what they say, this is what they are advocating, and this is their purpose for the agenda. When 30 by 30 first came out they said, “We are going to permanently protect 30 percent of America’s lands and oceans. “

My first response was that they’re talking about our land, not about their land. They’re trying to impose their agenda on other people, not on them. They will be the people who will control the land and say what happens to the protected lands. We will be the new serfs. That is really the society that they envision and it’s an elitist viewpoint. They do believe that they’re smarter than the rest of us, and they can make better decisions with the land than we can. That’s part of it.

For some people it’s about money, and for some people it’s about power and control. This is really nothing new. Society has fought these battles over and over throughout history. This isn’t a new agenda, it’s just new players trying to implement it.

Mr. Jekielek:
There is an authoritarian impulse in a segment of our society and they believe they know better. It doesn’t matter what compelling evidence there is to the contrary, they feel good about imposing that idea on others. f

Ms. Byfield:
Yes, it was Klaus Scwhab who said, “You will own nothing and be happy.” But you need to realize that somebody is going to own the land and the resources. All these things that we use every day, somebody will own that. They have self-appointed themselves to be the owners and the leasers of that.

That is what our founders were trying to prevent when America was in crisis. When America was established, it was from a different perspective. It wasn’t that kings or royalty or elitists or globalists would control the population. It was about self-sufficiency and self-reliance, and that the individual would have equal opportunity.

That’s why when the eastern states were settled, when Jefferson made the Louisiana Purchase of 540 million acres, he opened that up to settlement and every acre of that was settled. Depending on where you settled, you could acquire anywhere from 120 to 640 acres. That was based on how many acres it took to make a good living, to raise a family, to be productive, and to have a product to contribute to society.

It’s equal opportunity and equal protection. In other words, it doesn’t matter if you’re rich or poor. We are all protected under the law from all kinds of ills. That’s what America is all about. It’s based on this idea of self-sufficiency. We the people would run this government.

That’s really what they are taking away. That’s what they’re trying to do with the sustainability agenda, the Agenda 2030. It’s all about canceling all of that and moving the natural resource wealth into the hands of the elites and the globalists to control us. This hearkens back to something that my dad said 30 years ago, which is more poignant today than when he said it. He said, “You either have the right to own property or you are property.”

When you think about that, that’s really where they are headed. When they say you will own nothing and like it, actually, there is somebody that will own it. Their plan is that it will not be us, which then makes us their property. When you really start thinking about it on that level, it’s absolutely chilling what they are trying to do.

Mr. Jekielek:
Let’s talk about the natural asset companies. You have played a very important role in alerting people and advocating for stopping this movement towards this new asset class, where someone decides the monetary value on natural processes, and someone actually gets to own them. Please explain to us what was won by stopping these companies from coming into existence with the New York Stock Exchange.

Ms. Byfield:
The IEG and New York Stock Exchange were trying to create that market vehicle where these natural processes could be quantified and monetized and enrolled, and then the world elite could invest in those products. That was the vehicle and mechanism they had to get set up to make this idea work, because they needed the Security Exchange Commission to approve the rule to allow these to be listed on the New York Stock Exchange. The proposed rule that was released on October 4th was to finish out that process so that they could establish these. Once that was done, then NACs could have been created all over the U.S.

A natural asset company would take over the Florida Forever program, a conservation area. Then all of the ecosystem services in that area would have to be enrolled into that specific NAC [Natural Asset Company]. Then the investors would invest in that. Now, what was important is not only were these rights, these ecosystem rights or ecological performance rights enrolled in the NACs, but then the SEC would have to convey management authority over those assets to the natural asset companies.

Let’s say the federal government decided to take Yellowstone National Park and enroll it into a NAC. That means the investors who own that NAC company, a private company, now have the management authority over our national parks. That is what this rule was doing. Instead of the National Park Service managing the land, now you had a third party, private entity having management authority over these lands.

Part of the concern that we raised is, “In this process, who is managing what?” The SEC doesn’t have the authority to decide who will manage our lands or the ecosystem services on our lands. By simply approving this rule they were conveying that authority to private entities, so it created a lot of problems.

Mr. Jekielek:
It could also be foreign interests controlling this, or it could be someone that doesn’t have a particular interest in that area in the first place. There has been this trend towards globalism which hasn’t worked out well.

Ms. Byfield:
Yes. Exhibit five of this SEC rule specifically invited foreign investment into these NACs. A NAC could be created in the Grand Canyon area where we have a lot of critical minerals. The Biden administration, through the 30 by 30 program, has now locked those up and will not allow development. They have withdrawn these.

Now, these protected assets like critical minerals can be enrolled in a NAC. Then you have China Sovereign Wealth Fund investing in it and having management authority over those resources. NACs have to manage the resources that were enrolled for sustainability and to increase the production of the ecosystem services, so there could be no oil, gas, or mineral extraction.

It would make sense that a foreign enemy wanted to control our resources, and keep us from developing our resources while they exploit theirs and increase their standing worldwide. It was a perfect way for our enemies to control us and become more powerful in doing so. This NAC role would have just been a simple doorway for them to do that. People don’t really understand how close we were to really harming not only the development and the production of our resources, but also our national security.

Mr. Jekielek:
You’re creating an opportunity for an entity to exert influence on the federal government to allow them to use that material. In the case of the China Sovereign Wealth Fund, the Chinese regime would lobby for its own benefit, as it does in multiple areas here in D.C.

Ms. Byfield:
That was absolutely something that we foresaw happening. The way that it was structured, that could be done. Let me give you an example. The rules said that a NAC could be delisted if they violated the sustainability requirements. Let’s say that you have an area that China is heavily invested in through one of the NACs. Because everything has to be managed to increase the ecosystem services, that means all productive uses really have to be decreased.

Once you eliminate the productive uses, people can’t make a living off that land anymore, so the NAC will end up acquiring all that property directly. In other words the landowners sell out when they can’t farm or ranch there under the sustainability requirements, just like you’re seeing in the Netherlands right now. Those kinds of policies can be shaped and put into place in these NACs.

Eventually you have the landowners abandoning their private property, because they can’t make a living there anymore. But you have the sovereign wealth fund there to buy them all up. Once they acquire all those rights, all they have to do is start drilling it or mining it, and they will get delisted from the New York Stock Exchange as a NAC. Which means they’re no longer prohibited to do any of that, and they own everything outright and can develop it outright.

The natural asset companies and 30 by 30 is all about gaining control of our resources. This is not about using our resources, it’s about who is going to use our resources. In America, that’s supposed to be the people, the small landholders.

In fact, there’s a great letter that Thomas Jefferson wrote when he was in France. He had been walking through the French countryside, and he was noticing all the king’s land, and how there were all these great resources that could be developed which could support a lot of families. Yet, the masses in the French countryside were in extreme poverty, because they had no property and they couldn’t make their own living. He writes back home and says, “In America we can’t let this happen. In America it’s the small landholder that is the most important part of the state.”

He really was right about that, because think about what a piece of land does. If you own a piece of land, it gives you the ability to build your own structure, to grow your own food, to raise your family, and produce something that contributes to the local economy that you can make a decent living from. It allows people to be independent and self-sufficient.

If the people own the land, they control the resources. If the people own the natural resource wealth of the country, they can always control their government, and they can always protect their individual liberties. That’s why it’s so important to understand that land and liberty are intricately connected. You can’t have one without the other. The people have to own the land to have that individual liberty.

Our opponents, the people behind the 30 by 30 agenda, know that as well. Think of what Karl Marx said when he defined socialism. He said it is the abolishment of private property. Our ability to own property is what allows us to have our individual liberties and they know that.

Sometimes in America, we have forgotten that. We haven’t been taught that in recent years. We don’t understand how important it is that they are trying to control our property through all of these great sounding agendas like conservation and saving species. Those are all devices they’re using to get control of the land and to remove the private landowner from the land. The natural asset company was the next device.

After they had cleared the title through the 30 by 30 agenda, got rid of the small landowners, or at least got control of the land of the small landowners through it, then the world elite would be able to profit from those protected lands. In other words, we couldn’t use them, but they would be able to profit from them through this natural asset company scam that they were trying to pull off.

Mr. Jekielek:
This national asset company class has been stopped. But my sense is this isn’t the end, from everything you’ve been telling me. What’s next on your agenda or what you think is going to happen?

Ms. Byfield:
We do expect the natural asset companies to come back. They will come back in a new form, so we’re watching that. But more importantly, what we’re really focused on is watching the federal government try to do the same thing by creating what they’re calling natural capital accounts in order to monetize these natural processes and place them on the federal balance sheet. They are literally talking about adding a line item to the federal balance sheet that has a value of these natural processes for the purpose of increasing the collateral base to increase the national debt.

There are other reasons for it as well, but that is really the next thing. The natural capital accounts is the next opportunity they have to actually monetize these natural processes, which they have not been able to accomplish before. That is our next target. They are implementing this through a 15-year plan and through 27 federal agencies.

I liken our battle against the natural asset companies more like an airstrike, where we were able to very quickly marshal incredible people in really important positions that use their authority to really stop the NACs. That was essential and it was done in three months’ time from the moment they issued the rule, so it was pretty phenomenal.

But stopping the natural capital accounts through the White House strategy is going to be more like trench warfare. We’re going to have to dig that out via the federal agencies, so it’s going to be a little different battle. That’s the thing that the American people need to really be thinking about and watching for.

Mr. Jekielek:
Margaret Byfield, it’s such a pleasure to have you on the show.

Ms. Byfield:
Thank you and I really appreciate this. The key to all of this is getting the people educated. I really believe that once they know about this, they will do what is right and good for our country. I have a lot of faith in the American people, and programs like yours bring these things to light.

Mr. Jekielek:
Thank you all for joining Margaret Byfield and me on this episode of American Thought Leaders. I’m your host, Jan Jekielek.

This interview has been edited for clarity and brevity.