The SEC on Climate Change

If you thought that climate change was a matter for merely the Environmental Protection Agency or the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, think again. The Obama administration's Securities and Exchange Commission is taking on the issue, issuing a new "interpretive guidance" with four "areas as examples of where climate change may trigger disclosure requirements." Among the four are the "impact of legislation and regulation" and the "indirect consequences of regulation." Got that? The regulators are now regulating the businesses on what they have to tell their shareholders about regulation. In announcing the interpretive guidance, the SEC chairman, Mary Schapiro, insisted, "we are not opining on whether the world's climate is changing; at what pace it might be changing; or due to what causes. Nothing that the Commission does today should be construed as weighing in on those topics." Got that? The regulators are regulating businesses on what they have to tell their shareholders about the threat of regulation to address a problem that the regulators themselves aren't even willing to admit exists. You can't make this stuff up, you really can't. Anyway, more work for lawyers and investor relations communications firms.