Good riddance to the SEC’s climate disclosure requirement

It is no secret that the climate crisis narrative and the policies attendant upon it are facing political headwinds. After decades of climate alarmism about horrors that always are a mere decade or so away there is now substantial evidence that the American public places a much higher priority on such other problems as economic growth and healthcare costs.

But is climate alarmism such a clear political loser that the ideological opponents of fossil fuels will abandon it altogether?

Any such hope is deeply problematic. Climate policy — the political control of energy supplies — is tailor-made for the achievement of leftist ideological goals unrelated to the environment. Accordingly, the environmental left will not and cannot abandon climate alarmism.

Sooner or later there will be a left-wing U.S. administration with control over the various regulatory agencies. Accordingly, such policies must be opposed vigorously, and pulled out by the roots in whatever form they are found. 

This brings us to the Securities and Exchange Commission effort during the Biden administration to impose upon virtually every business in America — including, indirectly, nonpublic companies not formally subject to SEC jurisdiction — a requirement that they disclose the supposed climate change risks attendant to their profitability from their own greenhouse emissions and from greenhouse gas emissions in general.

That proposed regulation would have imposed massive costs and litigation threats upon most........

© The Hill