Its not about the policy, its about the authorization.

Fed Chairman Jerome Powell gave a speech in Sweden on Tuesday as reported in Powell says Fed might have to make unpopular decisions to stabilize prices by Jeff Cox.  

In the speech, Powell says:

Decisions about policies to directly address climate change should be made by the elected branches of government and thus reflect the public’s will as expressed through elections.  But without explicit congressional legislation, it would be inappropriate for us to use our monetary policy or supervisory tools to promote a greener economy or to achieve other climate-based goals. We are not, and will not be, a ‘climate policymaker.'

I see many independent news channels celebrating the apparent reversal on using the Fed to pursue ESG and climate change policy.  And I agree, that reversal is important, if real.

Perhaps it is just excuse-making or window dressing, but I think the more important commitment made is not about reversing the use of the Fed to pursue climate change regulations.  The more important, and one applicable throughout the Federal government is the need for explicit congressional authorization for an action and the need to adhere to the agency's actual mandated goals and should:

stick to our knitting and not wander off to pursue perceived social benefits that are not tightly linked to our statutory goals and authorities.

You could make a strong argument that the CDC failed so dramatically, and with possibly grave long term social and individual damages, because they spent three decades drifting away from their mission to identify and control infectious diseases and began focusing on issues not in their statutory goals and authorities.  Issues such as gun control, social inequality, climate change, critical race theory, etc.  

Legislators were complaining about this for decades to little effect.  Then Covid-19 hit in 2020 and the CDC demonstrated that while it was wandering in the wilderness of radical ideologies, it had lost its capacity to actually manage its core mission.  Infectious disease control.

It broke all its existing protocols.  It jettisoned all scientific standards.  It pursued strategies which have been known historically known to fail.  It failed to implement adequate measurement systems to track the pandemic.  In fact, based on our knowledge then and now, at every point that a decision had to be made, the CDC demonstrably made the worst decision.  

It was supposed to be an infectious diseases control agency but had wanted to be an agency exerting social control.  It got ignored its legislated mission and failed.  

Hopefully, though probably naively, other agencies will listen to Powell's message and focus on the knitting and sticking to issues tightly linked to their statutory goals and authorization.