The SEC’s ‘Climate Disclosure’ Fraud

Written by ALEX EPSTEIN on March 22, 2024. Posted in Current News

Congress won’t support Biden’s anti-fossil-fuel agenda.So he’s circumventing the legislative process by having the SEC coerce companies into spouting anti-fossil-fuel propaganda and committing to anti-fossil-fuel plans in the name of “climate disclosure.” [some bold, links added]

The Securities and Exchange Commission’s (SEC) new rules have gotten many valid criticisms, e.g., they’ll force companies to do endless, costly paperwork, which discourages private companies from going public and thus contradicts the SEC’s goal of increasing the range of companies we can invest in.1

Sadly, most critics of the SEC’s rules are missing the biggest, most dangerous problem: they’re not actually “climate disclosure rules”—those already existed—they are anti-fossil-fuel propagandizing and planning rules that violate freedom of speech and endanger our economy.

HOW THE SEC’S REQUIRED “DISCLOSURE” OF “CLIMATE-RELATED RISKS” COERCES COMPANIES INTO PROPAGANDIZING FOR CLIMATE CATASTROPHE:

The purpose of “disclosure,” and the reason for requiring it, is that there are certain facts a company knows about, including its current plans for the future, that are material to investors assessing its future prospects, e.g., if a CEO has stage-4 cancer.

The SEC already required real climate-related disclosures. Companies had to disclose facts about their company and their plans that various future climate scenarios might impact, e.g., real estate developers were already required to disclose existing and planned beachfront properties.2

The “climate-related risks” the SEC now requires companies to disclose are not facts the company has distinct access to but opinions about climate science and climate economics—subjects most companies have little to no distinct knowledge of.

What opinions are companies with no distinct knowledge of climate science/economics supposed to disclose to the government about these subjects? The opinions of the government asking for them, of course—which in the case of this administration means: climate catastrophism.

SEC Chairman Gary Gensler swears that the SEC isn’t looking for any particular opinion: “We’re agnostic with regard to climate risk.”

But his singling out “climate risk” as a subject of disclosure is itself based on the opinion that climate risk is extremely and uniquely high.3

Telegraphing the catastrophist opinions they are looking for, the Biden SEC’s examples of “climate-related risks” involve rapid, exclusively negative climate changes—something many reasonable people, including many climate scientists and economists, disagree with.4

Businesses deciding what opinions on climate science and climate economics to “disclose” know that the SEC today is part of a catastrophist Biden administration that will be inclined to approve of catastrophist opinions and disapprove of non-catastrophist ones.

If a firm’s stock falls and it is viewed as not having properly disclosed related risks, it is vulnerable to shareholder lawsuits and SEC punishment.

When climate opinions are required as part of disclosure, a non-catastrophist company may be just one stock drop from peril.

Consider a real estate firm that’s skeptical of three feet per 100 years of sea level rise projections (the current rate is ~1 ft), and even more skeptical that adaptation will be extremely costly.

If the firm’s stock falls, catastrophists will surely blame its heretical climate opinions.5

Catastrophists blame everything on “climate change.” In 2020, when shale oil stocks collapsed due to Covid and overinvestment, catastrophists still claimed it was “climate change” that made oil “unsustainable.” (Oil stocks soon sustained fantastic gains.) 6

Given that we have a catastrophist administration that blames everything on climate change, a real estate company or any other company would be inviting destruction by “disclosing” non-catastrophist opinions that will make it an easy target whenever its stock drops significantly.

If companies “disclose” government-favored catastrophist opinions, they can feel relatively safe—even if those opinions turn out to be false and lead to destructive actions.

Does anyone think Biden’s SEC will punish a catastrophizing solar company if its predictions come false?

When a catastrophist administration forces companies to disclose climate opinions, voicing catastrophist opinions is safe, and voicing non-catastrophist opinions is dangerous. Thus, “climate disclosure rules” are anti-fossil-fuel propagandizing rules.

“Climate disclosure rules” that coerce companies to propagandize certain climate opinions are a complete violation of the First Amendment and should be thrown out by judges on that basis alone. (And should have never been considered by the Administration on that basis alone.)

“Climate disclosure” rules that coerce companies to propagandize certain climate opinions are also a major threat to our economy because they mislead the public into thinking that climate catastrophism and anti-fossil-fuel policies are more supported by industry than they are.

Many executives believe that we can master any climate challenges we face from rising CO2, in large part by using machines powered by fossil fuels—just as we’ve done to date, with climate disaster deaths decreasing 98% over the last century.

Such opinions must not be suppressed.7

Many executives believe that energy availability matters a lot more than climate change and that fossil fuels will for decades remain a uniquely cost-effective and scalable way to power America and the world (much of which is energy-poor).

Such opinions must not be suppressed.8

Source: Climate Change Dispatch