April 21, 2022
As a citizen and nurse I want to take the opportunity to comment in hopes that it will add to a mounting public outcry for rapid, meaningful change related to corporate incentives to act on climate concern. While in my professional life I have some expertise in communication of health information, I am not an expert on SEC reporting and existing climate requirements.
My thoughts on this topic relate mainly to the communication of simplified, transparent reporting of corporate investment in, performance of and outcomes related to climate impact in a way that benefits the AVERAGE AMERICAN CITIZEN trying to understand the landscape and what corporations to support.
During the pandemic we had daily, simplified reporting of impact and response. The climate crisis should be at least this important to the daily narrative if there is any hope of increasing cultural awareness as to the degree of concern and the adoption of new ideas as solutions. The website covidactnow.org is a great example of how data (aka SEC disclosures) could be made easy to SEE and relate to, with drop down menus for comparison. It should be possible to create dashboard or website using a universal set of disclosure data that news organizations, public orgs and any citizen could use on a daily/ weekly basis to track progress to aid in making investment, purchasing and advocacy decisions.
I don't think the SEC would have the authority to create a Department of Climate Security but rules like this could certainly make the necessary data for such an agency available to public entities, researchers and communicators.
Please continue your work to make disclosures meaningful, transparent, rapid, accountable and accessible.