Jun. 13, 2022
This is to offer strong support for the Securities and Exchange Commission’s (SEC) proposed rule that would require publicly-traded companies to disclose climate-related financial risk information (S7-10-22). Climate change is impacting every region of the world, and its effects—including extreme weather and related climate-fueled disasters—are accelerating. Humans and wildlife alike are suffering the consequences of an unstable climate and environmental degradation perpetuated by polluters and the use of obsolete technologies that are still being sold to businesses and citizens of our country and others around the world. As climate-related disasters increase in frequency and severity, the death and destruction left in their wake are increasing and getting out of hand. The promise of a stable financial system that can support the American economy is becoming more challenging to ensure, especially while investors and other market actors don’t have all the necessary information to make smart, climate-responsible, community-minded investment decisions. We need sustainable American and international markets that give investors and other market actors information to support choices of backing companies that try their best to heal the environment, including those that actively address climate change and its attendant droughts, fires, storms, floods, outbreaks of vector-borne diseases, loss of sensitive species, conflicts, and associated refugee crises. Other countries are already requiring these types of climate-related disclosures from companies, so it is time for the U.S. to step up and do the same. The environment and all that it provides us is priceless—we enjoy national and state parks that offer us inspiring views and exciting glances at wildlife, and the biodiversity found across this nation provides life-sustaining ecosystem services. With global average temperatures on the rise causing large losses in biodiversity, we are quickly losing all that is precious to us. We need transparent information about climate-related investment risks. Thank you for proposing this rule, and I urge the SEC to finalize it as quickly as possible. Val Beasley