Pirate's Cove

They just want to make business harder and more expensive

The S.E.C. moves closer to enacting a sweeping climate disclosure rule.

The Securities and Exchange Commission has said for the first time that public companies must tell their shareholders and the federal government how they affect the climate, a sweeping proposal long demanded by environmental advocates.

The nation’s top financial regulator gave initial approval to the much-anticipated climate disclosure rule at a meeting on Monday, moving forward with a measure that would bolster the Biden administration’s stalled environmental agenda.

The proposed rule — approved by a 3-1 vote — was a major step toward holding companies accountable for their role in climate change and giving investors more leverage in forcing changes to business practices that have contributed to rising global temperatures.

Ben Cushing, who leads the Sierra Club’s push for stronger climate disclosures, cheered what he called a “long-overdue step” and urged the commission to quickly finalize “the strongest rule possible.”

It still must go through the rule making process, but, does anyone think the climate cultists won’t make this happen?

The SEC’s Climate-Change Overreach

The Securities and Exchange Commission will propose sweeping new rules this week requiring publicly traded, and perhaps even private, companies to disclose extensive climate-related data and additional “climate risks.”

Setting climate policy is the job of lawmakers, not the SEC, whose role is to facilitate the investment decision-making process. Companies choose how best to comply and thrive under those polices, and investors decide which business strategies to back. That approach addresses many societal issues—think vaccines—and enhances global welfare. Taking a new, activist approach to climate policy—an area far outside the SEC’s authority, jurisdiction and expertise—will deservedly draw legal challenges. What’s worse, it puts our time-tested approach to capital allocation, as well as the agency’s independence and credibility, at risk.

That’s correct, the SEC shouldn’t be basing this on some tiny bit of language in another bill, possibly one that has little relation to ‘climate change’. Congress is responsible for this, not unelected and unaccountable bureaucrats.

Understanding and addressing global climate change is one of the most complex and significant issues of our time. Some predict we face inevitable catastrophe, while others say the costs of the transition to a “net-zero world” outweigh the benefits

We know four things for sure. First, implementing an economywide emissions-reduction policy will have a profound impact on the domestic energy, labor, transportation and housing markets, among others. Many jobs will be destroyed while others are created. Some businesses will close while others will flourish. Even if the long-term benefits outweigh the costs, near-term stresses on working Americans are inevitable and will be distributed unequally.

Government shouldn’t be picking winners and losers for a scam. Especially bureaucrats

Fourth, the body that the Constitution prescribes for weighing the relevant trade-offs in this area is Congress. Congress, duly elected by and responsible to the people, is precisely where climate policy, in all its complexities and consequences, should be resolved. Yet over decades, elected leaders have pushed hard policy questions to federal agencies staffed by unelected bureaucrats, whose decisions are reviewed only by unelected judges. This is at best bad for democracy and at worst unconstitutional.

Demanding that the SEC “act on climate change” allows politicians to say that they are working on their constituents’ behalf without accepting responsibility for the hard choices involved in crafting policy.

Exactly. And this will drive up costs, which are then passed on to consumers.