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Jul 17, 2009 11:00 AM | 2
Just as Wal-Mart’s plan to start eco-labeling its products is splashing down into the summer corporate news kiddie pool, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) is in talks about making companies do some serious environmental reporting of their own.
The SEC may eventually require all publicly traded companies to let consumers (that is, investors) know what kinds of risks—financial and otherwise—climate change may pose to the bottom line.
“It’s really time for us to take another very serious look at the disclosure system,” an SEC commissioner told Environment & Energy Publishing (via The New York Times).
Investment groups had approached the SEC in June to discuss climate disclosure for companies. “What an investor is looking for is adequate information to make smart decisions,” president of eco-focused financial network Ceres, Mindy Lubber told the Associated Press at the time.
Some companies, however, maintain that the disclosures would be little more than a shot in the dark. “There are so many hypotheticals that you have to throw into the assumptions that I’m not sure how valid detailed cost reporting would be,” an American Electric Power spokesperson told the AP.
But the SEC has continued its discussion. “We have a lot of internal education to do,” Elisse Walter, one of the SEC commissioners told E&E. “This is obviously not an agency populated with climate experts.”
Earlier this year, the National Association of Insurance Commissioners drafted a similar recommendation, which, if adopted by states, requires large insurance groups to make climate risk information available to the public. Many firms already keep tabs on such risks.
If the SEC settles on a similar mandate, the idea of which had been brushed off throughout the last administration, it could make some big waves, indeed.
Image courtesy of iStockphoto/ISerg
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2 Comments
Add CommentWe're doing this in architecture. As always, everyone complains and wrings their hands and moans. ...until like little children, we realize no one is listening with sympathy, at which point we shut up and just back to work and do it the right way. I expect this will be the way in every industry.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAll this rests on the increasingly crumbling pre-supposition that AGW is real. The SEC would love to handle this issue; more fees for them. Funny how every government agency who could profit from this is clammering to get on board.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisYesterday I received an email from two high profile environmental groups claiming touting a list of approved vendors for carbon credits. Makes you wonder how much they are getting in donations from the climate industrial complex.
Follow the bouncing $$. Exxon-Mobil may be involved, but they're on the other side of the table now.