Progressive Craziness Of The Day: SEC Obsesses Over “Climate” Risk Disclosures
This makes three posts in a row on the subject of a “progressive craziness of the day.” But then, there’s enough progressive craziness to have such a post every day; or, really, multiple. There is an endless supply.
As a reader of this blog, you may rarely pay much attention to what comes out of the Securities & Exchange Commission. If you should ever look, it probably all seems like a lot of inside baseball mumbo jumbo. On the other hand, if you are a senior executive or board member at a public company, or maybe a corporate lawyer at one of the big law firms, you must pay close attention to everything the SEC does. The Commission wields oodles of arbitrary and unaccountable power. When the SEC says “jump,” corporate America responds, “how high?”
Needless to say, the SEC is one of those government places filled with seemingly “smart” people with no practical sense or knowledge about how the world actually works. But they think that with their brilliance they can bring about perfection and utopia in the world with just a few more regulations and micromanagement of the little people. Then — as has happened in the past few months — the real world intervenes, and shows what dopes these people are.
Since Joe Biden took office as President back in January, the SEC has gone completely berserk with an obsession over “Climate Change Disclosure.” To be fair, the SEC’s core mission is requiring disclosures from businesses of relevant information. But which information is important? Fortunately all the “smart” people know that the very most important risk facing the world today is “climate change.” The risk is “existential.” All the with-it governments of the world are committing themselves to “net zero” carbon emissions. Every company that currently uses fossil fuels could be affected; and the producers of the fossil fuels, like oil and gas and coal companies, are the clear first targets.
Obviously, lots of energy-intensive companies could be floundering or even out of business before you know it. Surely, the public must be warned!
So under Biden the SEC got right to work. On February 1, 2021 it announced the hiring of its first ever Senior Policy Advisor for “Climate and ESG.” On February 24, the Acting Chair of the Commission directed the staff to “enhance its focus on climate-related disclosure”:
Today, I am directing the Division of Corporation Finance to enhance its focus on climate-related disclosure in public company filings. . . . Now more than ever, investors are considering climate-related issues when making their investment decisions. It is our responsibility to ensure that they have access to material information when planning for their financial future.
Then, on March 4, the SEC announced the creation of a new Enforcement Task Force on Climate and ESG Issues.
The task force will be led by Kelly L. Gibson, the Acting Deputy Director of Enforcement, who will oversee a Division-wide effort, with 22 members drawn from the SEC’s headquarters, regional offices, and Enforcement specialized units. . . . The initial focus will be to identify any material gaps or misstatements in issuers’ disclosure of climate risks under existing rules.
On March 15, the big announcement was that the SEC was now considering major changes to rules governing disclosure of “climate change” risk. (“[Q]uestions arise about whether climate change disclosures adequately inform investors about known material risks, uncertainties, impacts, and opportunities. . . .”) In its Spring Regulatory Agenda, published in June, the SEC then notified the world that it was considering whether to “propose rule amendments to enhance registrant disclosures regarding issuers’ climate-related risks and opportunities.” That release suggested that new rules might come as early as October. And on July 28, new Chair Gary Gensler spoke at a conference, where he stated that he had requested the staff “to develop a mandatory climate risk disclosure rule proposal for the Commission’s consideration by the end of the year.”
So shall we check on what is happening in the real world?
The headline on the front page of the Wall Street Journal today is “Climate-Focused Investors Miss Oil-and-Gas Rally.” (Online, it’s “Energy-Stock Surge Leaves Climate-Focused Investors Behind.”) It seems that even as the SEC has spent 2021 obsessing over whether investors are adequately informed about the terrible risks to the energy sector from government “climate” policies, stocks in that sector have surged some 54% since the beginning of the year. Oh, and 19% just in the past month, as artificial government-induced coal and natural gas shortages have sent prices spiking:
The S&P 500 energy sector has rebounded 54% this year, outpacing the broad index’s 21% climb and leading the second-best performing group by about 16 percentage points. . . . [T]hose who avoided the sector also avoided its 19% surge in the past month. The S&P 500 is up about 3% in that span.
Here is a chart of the stock prices of several prominent oil and gas companies against the S&P 500 since the start of the year:
It seems that it never occurred to the geniuses in our government that the combination of increasing reliance on useless wind and solar energy with restrictions on new drilling and pipelines for oil and gas would lead to a spike in prices for fossil fuels — and to big increases in the value of fossil fuel-producing companies.
There will shortly be thousands upon thousands of additional pages of corporate disclosures of the “risks” of attempts by governments to suppress the use of fossil fuels. But governments have no real idea how to replace the fossil fuels and still have a modern economy.
Is there a way to invest in “Stupid” as a commodity?
I mean, it’s omnipresent, and now getting weaponized.
What’s Elon doing in this space? Should I follow his moves?
It’s ‘post-intelligence’ I believe!
“Stupid” is a growth industry. One way to take advantage is to invest in fossil fuels.
This whole mess is going to be a huge bonanza for lawyers.
Government sets up impossible to meet standards, then the lawyers sue when the companies fail to meet those standards.
So this new manifestation of “Stupid” will be a powerhouse driver of lawfare?
Which in turn translates to mountains of printer paper being used?
(and printer cartridges of course).
Go Bitcoin.
“Bought on 22nd May 2010 by Laszlo Hanyecz, the programmer paid a fellow Bitcoin Talk forum user 10,000 BTC for two Papa John’s pizzas. Back then – when the technology was just over a year old – that equated to roughly $25, but is $5.12m by today’s exchange rate.”
Hopefully the receiver of said BTC didn’t squander it later on an Uber ride across town. Kidding aside, I don’t get crypto. At a minimum, holders are walking into the cross-hairs of every government and central bank on the planet, including that of our “friends” in the PRC. Not to mention that, as it was recently estimated that it takes the electricity equivalent of France to maintain the BTC block-chain ledger, I have no clue why people who think we’re slouching towards TEOWAWKI, of some other SHTF scenario, can rationally believe that holding their wealth in crypto is going to work out for them when the grid goes dark.
Crypto is a bubble – when it pops, it’ll just be worthless data.
Curious George, I barely managed to extricate my savings and borrowings from my Dot.Com “sure-thing” era investments.
And I wasn’t an unsuspecting dabbler – I was an insider with many connections & contacts with the play-makers.
Ever since that bullet-dodge, I’ve been a boring old Warren Buffet disciple –
“balance sheet, assets, liquidity, earnings, dividends, stability”.
And bricks & mortar of course.
And I also don’t have a fling at casinos or bookmakers.
If one follows the Austrian School’s criticism of socialism, no one has accurate enough information to set prices without a free market giving feedback.
This is socialist Rube Goldberg machine fortune telling. Pretending to estimate what effects government policies will have on given company will inevitably result in total fantasy writing.
Communism can set those prices accurately.
Afterwards and after data adjustments, just as AGW except that genocide is part of the adjustment.
But if we take a look into NWO future,
price setting is irrelevant as it is no longer about price or money but only about energy units a single person will be allowed to consume per day (some watts of electricity + oatmeal(no energy required to mix) and bugs 360 days a year + 5 days soylent green)
But who writes the reports before the disclosures? I imagine the consultants lining up with their begging bowls for $millions to forecast the future for each stock exchange listed company. $Billions wasted to replace the assets & fossil fuel products we have now, nothing additional except it increases costs (paid + subsidies) until some nirvana is reached. It’s nice having furniture made of natural wood, clothes of natural fibres but not everything is that simple. YMMV.
Obsession is it the marching order from the Party.
In fact, “the risk of attempts by governments to suppress the use of fossil fuels” is more appropriately labeled a political risk disclosure. It’s tragic that in America, a supposedly free country, companies must now disclose that the government might seek to loot them in the name of a “climate crisis” that exists only as an opportunistic power grab by American Marxists. Note that the Declaration of Independence requires government to protect life, liberty, and property, and defines a government that does not as tyrannical and despotic.
Truth be told there is no replacement for fossil fuels. Once we lose the portability of oil there is no fusion, fission, wind turbines solar panels EV’s or ICE cars and vehicles. Having spent some considerable time in the NHS this year it is patently obvious that everything the NHS needs to provide its services is 100% reliant on fossil fuels to enable all of the medical equipment they need and without petrochemicals none of the products demanded to treat patients from blood tests to catheters and syringes. We actually waste our most precious resource to take holidays in Spain how stupid is that. The problem is not that fossil fuels cause climate change the problem is that once extinguished its good bye Vienna.
Every madness dreamed by climate change fear practitioners and every solution advocated to solve a non existent problem is an Alice in Wonderland fantasy a myth which evaporates as soon as you begin to identify the numbers and relate those numbers to what is and what will always remain finite commodities which cannot be dug out of the ground without oil and cannot be shipped across the oceans without oil and cannot be refined and manufactured without fossil fuels.
It never ceases to amaze me that Shell and BP whilst protesting the greenness and desire to end their use of fossil fuels to appease the madding crowd will then set up like Ineos production facilities to turn methane into hydrogen because of a deceptive political whim to help these demented and discredited morons and greenwash their reliance on fossil fuels.
Doesn’t everyone know that everything dug out of the environment is finite? The BP report indicates we maybe have 60 years of provide methane reserves, but there is hopefully more than that. Biden stops pipeline growth but shale gas producers in response just flare off which is a finite resource like Qatar who flare off more methane in one day to keep production at full capacity than the UK burns in one year. But to appease political dimwits like Boris and XR Shell and BP have decided to embrace hydrogen by steam reformation of methane knowing that if you burn one ton of methane you emit 2.5 tons of Co2 but to get one ton of hydrogen you need to reform 3.5 tons of methane in a process which emits 12.5 tons of Co2. Therefore if Co2 is a concern you need to embrace CCS which neither Shell or BP do a this time when steam reforming methane for hydrogen to clean petroleum spirit to the current standard which is never mentioned by the UN or the EU with the extra Co2 emitted to atmosphere.
The reason why CCS will never work is because of the parasitic load. If you want to bury 12.5 tons of Co2 for every ton of hydrogen produced you need to burn another 1.5 tons of methane to power the capture sequestration compression transit and storage underground for all time. Hydrogen can never be a solution because its cost is at least 4 or 5 times more than burning methane directly and whether its used for heating cooking or transport the cost will come back to the consumer but politicians couldn’t care less because the alternative is to admit they are stupid muddle headed incompetent and inadequate and who else can pay other than the consumer, there isn’t anyone else.
If every country adopted hydrogen from methane because there never can be enough wind and solar capacity to meet current demand and generate hydrogen as well. Nuclear power could never be rolled out at an economic cost to generate hydrogen it is all pie in the sky mendacity and prevarication. Boris to meet Net Zero is acting like a phone based scammer he doesn’t expect every one to fall for his bludgeoning but just enough to across a wide enough remit by nibbling a bit here and there ad hoc so that he can glorify himself in historical terms as being the climate redeemer who save the planet. Who could ever prove him wrong because he is endeavouring to solve a problem that does not exist.
Perhaps the finite nature of fossil fuels is one method of a civilization proving itself viable when it masters hydrogen fusion to produce energy. A test of Universal “fitness”.
But a carbon+ based energy system is only really viable when people have developed a recyclable method for hydrogen fusion as the base load. It can produce carbon-based fuels as portable power.
Creating hydrocarbons from hydrogen and carbon just takes energy. Fission works just fine NOW.
Will fusion EVER work?
“Exxon knew” decades ago so invest in Exxon.
Yep, already did, got in at $38 and it is around $64 today.
So whats the disclosure look like … the climate looks fine got plenty of fossil fuel reserves, next item.
My response to this disclosure requirement would go something like this:
“The major threats relating to the viral PERCEPTION of Climate Change lie in the vague and changing edicts which will emanate from the SEC and which could result in damage to our productivity. Otherwise we have secure access to fossil fuel resources and the continued capability to turn this into a healthy return on investment for our shareholders.
Meanwhile we consider that the climate remains in the future to be benign.”
It is really just a way of stuffing corporations with university graduates that have no business being in a business. And the first step is to “create a need”.
If anyone has been at the university long enough, one can’t help but notice that the administration has grown like Kudzu and the trend is no longer sustainable. The universities simply can’t absorb more of their social justice and environmental studies graduates.
The solution to that is to create jobs in the corporate sector for them. Thus in addition to CFOs we now have CDOs (chief diversity officers) who run diversity departments in parallel to human resources departments.
There is nothing nefarious about it but is a feature of socialist governments:
After this climate risk disclosure mandate takes effect there will be a need for CCOs (chief climate officers) and climate change mitigation and risk assessment departments.
Thus, the strategy is two fold: it creates “new industries” for university graduates and eventually puts the corporation under ideological control.
Our universities were strangled by progressive “woke” administrators and thus so will our corporations… this is just the beginning of the “Long March through the Corporations”. IMHO
Well said. EVERYTHING democrats do is make work for liberals.
Fund college, hire liberals to “educate” and oversee. K-12 for less than 30 students per classroom, what I had all through 1-12, no K, to hire more liberal teachers. Defund the conservative police, hire liberal social workers to help the helpless. Make the “homeless” (vagrants) a protected class and hire liberals to “help” them. What is diversity, CRT, etc. about? To force business to hire worthless social studies graduates. When I went to college, we called those departments the “college of basket weaving” because the graduates were as valuable as a basket weaver to the “rising tide’ of total economic output of a modern society.
And all these liberals are paid more than the electricians, carpenters, plumbers, etc. that build our cities, etc., and overall more then the end “users” get in aggregate income.
Time to stop all liberal full employment federal policies and follow the US constitution re congress’ enumerated powers. Put an end to the rule from the bench, CONGRESS can decide WHAT the courts can adjudicate. And LOOSER PAYS with any pro-bono attorneys held responsible for the monetary losses of the looser will greatly decrease the drain the legal system in on society, and get many intelligent people out of law and into useful professions.
A Federal Court has declared that hippos enjoy “personhood”.
Well really, with all the leftist talk of a “wealth tax”, the more you overstate the climate risk to your company, the less good will value it will have to be taxed away….
If climate change is an existential risk, then it doesn’t matter what these companies report, because none of us will be here to read the reports.
Mark, you’re thinking a situation through.
You know that’s not how things are done these days. 🙁
The third term of Obama ratchets up the time wasting from the weekly queue of federal agencies with nonsense climate press releases to weekly forcings of reporting regs by the federal agencies and weekly climate press releases. Americans are still all paying the price for not supporting the Waxman-Markey Carbon Tax redistribution of wealth bill in Congress. The price is having the messaging drilled into your heads daily now.
The whole purpose is to collapse capitalism.
Then the socialists can take over by default.
Better stated, the whole purpose is to collapse individual liberty. I dislike the term “capitalism”, which Marx coined to obfuscate the obvious benefits of peaceful and voluntary exchanges between producers, including labor, and consumers. If we’re going to fight, whether on economic, social or scientific issues, we need to stop letting socialists of all stripes set the terms and conditions of the conflict.
The only risk climate change presents to companies, is the ever more insane regulations coming out of brain dead government apparatchiks, and since government is always unpredictable, trying to predict what stupidity will come from the next is a fool’s game.
I do hope the Synod of the Church of England hasn’t dis invested in fossil fuel companies who are not conforming to the Paris Agreement like they said they might. Poor threadbare priestly pensioners.
I hope the Synod have dis invested in all fossil fuel companies, for they are now the work of the devil.
Let God feed, clothe & keep them warm (without resorting to fossil fuel ) … the few that survive will be content to know that their nearest & dearest are rotting in the arms of Jesus, while they slowly freeze/starve to death.
Leaving more for us sinners !!
I’d much rather be in the boiler room stoking the fires of hell, than freezing my a$$ on a cloud trying to play a harp with frostbitten fingers.
It’s so easy to point out the fools. They are everywhere and the fullness of time continues to expose them…… yet still they come.
David R. Burton warned SEC against this path in July 2021.
https://www.sec.gov/comments/climate-disclosure/cll12-8914466-244728.pdf
Synopsis:
1. Climate Change Disclosure Would Impede the Commission’s Important Mission.
2. Immaterial Climate Change “Disclosure” Would Obfuscate Rather than Inform.
3. Climate Models and Climate Science are Highly Uncertain.
4. Economic Modeling of Climate Change Effects is Even More Uncertain.
5. The Commission Does Not Possess the Expertise to Competently Assess Climate Models or the Economic Impact of Climate Change.
6. The Commission Has Neither the Expertise nor the Administrative Ability to Assess the Veracity of Issuer Climate Change Disclosures.
7. Commission Resources Are Better Spent Furthering Its Mission.
8. The Costs Imposed on Issuers Would be Large.
9.Climate Change Disclosure Requirements Would Further Reduce the Attractiveness of Becoming a Public Company, Harming Ordinary Investors and Entrepreneurial Capital Formation.
10. Climate Change Disclosure Requirements Would Create a New Compliance Eco-System and a New Lobby to Retain the Requirements.
11. Climate Change Disclosure Requirements Would Result in Much Litigation.
12. Material Actions by Management in Furtherance of Social and Political Objectives that Reduce Returns must be Disclosed.
13. Fund Managers Attempts to Profit from SRI at the Expense of Investors Should be Policed.
14. Duties of Fund Managers Should be Clarified.
15. Securities Laws are a Poor Mechanism to Address Externalities.
16. Climate Change Disclosure Requirements Would Have No Meaningful Impact on the Climate.
Summary at
https://rclutz.com/2021/07/06/sec-warned-off-climate-disclosures/
How isn’t it a first amendment violation if you can’t just print:
?
Unfortunately, given the extent of the rot at the top of most major corporations, and particularly within their legal and human resources departments, it’s difficult to envision such a statement. Also driving this are major fund managers, who want to be “with it” in front of their 29 year old second wives. While I’m not in favor of higher taxes for anyone, I think dangling the elimination of the “carried interest deduction” over the heads of these evil clowns would go a long way towards reducing Wall Street’s support for climate activism and many other forms of wokesterism,
The problem (reality) to get to zero CO2 emissions, using the green scams and magic batteries/hydrogen storage, would require shutting down the ‘fossil’ fuel industry. The ‘disclosure’ is the plan will not work.
This is a ‘pledge’ to follow a plan, that is impossible.
That is why China is promising to reduce CO2 emissions after we bankrupt our countries.
The plan to get to zero CO2 emissions will make electricity more and more expensive which would make industries that require high energy inputs not economically possible, in the countries, which are forcing zero CO2 emissions and who have very high CO2 taxes.
One of the key issues, which the public is not aware of, is the Green Scam Legislation is trying, to force heating, manufacturing, transportation, and so on ….
Which are currently powered by burning hydrocarbons while be forced to be powered by electricity.
That will force the electrical grid to be expanded by a factor of three. The public has no idea that the plan is madness and will never work. This is a link to a UK analysis that outlined some of the impossible to solve problems.
http://www.ukfires.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/Absolute-Zero-online.pdf
“The UK electrical grid power supply output would be required to INCREASE by a factor of THREE (with zero emissions) as all heating, manufacturing, and transportation, is going to be powered from electricity”
Cement cannot be made with zero emissions and there is no solution. Same for how to power ships or airplanes. There is no solution as to how to construct buildings or what is going to replace plastics.
There is no solution for how to mine with zero emissions or how to smelt steel. The solution is more recycling.
Firefox says there is a security risk with that download.
Yes Dave, my foxfox (Version 93.0 – 64bit) keeps doing similar all over the place
The way round, a way round, is to:
right-click on the link > copy link > open a new tab and right click in its address bar > paste and go
Nothing ever shows in the new tab but the download happens. usually
I love Net-Zero analyses that start with: “First we must reduce energy usage by 60%.” Its all down-hill fantasy from there.
Airplanes and ships could probably run on ammonia. New processes under development much cheaper.
Will Rogers said it best — “It is easy to be a comedian when you have the whole government working for you”.
Or as I put it: Laughing at climate hysteria
https://www.cfact.org/2021/10/22/positive-diverse-people-having-fun-watching-funny-videos-together/
Here’s the “climate crisis”:
All major corporations should provide climate risk assessments that say essentially the greatest risk they face is the destruction of reliable, affordable energy and replacement with unreliable expensive wind/solar energy. They should also say that the risks from climate change itself are likely to be minimal and unlikely to have any significant impact on future business. Then let the SEC challenge this risk assessment and try to prove their case in court.
Perhaps the Heartland Institute of Competitive Enterprise Institute could create a model climate risk disclosure statement that corporations could adopt.
This green-disclosure caper comes directly from Prince Charles himself who first proposed the scam a decade ago, as accounting rules.
Then at the FED 2019 August Jackson Hole confab, Mark Carney, UN Climate Finance czar, with BlackRock in tow, announced Regime Change – in other words a technocrat managerial takeover from all nations especially the USA.
So this does not come from an elected government, even if they do march along, for now.
The very survival of the utterly bankrupt transatlantic depends on this to unleash a $150 trillion hyperinflation.
Guess who benefits?
Anyway the Queen herself, rather peeved recently about talk and doing nothing, and hopefully Greta, will now cheer up!
Tea at Buckingham anyone?
The greatest risk from Climate Change are the actions governments have started and are planning to take that will cause more expensive and unreliable power, while compromising the electrical grid.
If corporate disclosures do not include that impact, would it be possible to sue them for not including that from climate change?
For those with a strong nerve, a sense of fun and a GSOH – that is not any sort of ‘great risk‘
What it will do is to crash the propaganda machine, giving folks a brief minute or two to Think For Themselves and re-connect with reality
Thereafter = Curtains For Climate Change
edit to recall a wise-ness and all about Strong Nerves, Agile Minds and GSOH
A real warrior only dies once…
The coward dies a thousand times
These are the same clowns who could not see the mortgage crash coming, right? How stupid do you have to be to not expect a big problem when people are being encouraged to borrow 120% of the value of their home? And then spend it on a boat or expensive vacation? No matter how brilliant you are, going to work for the government has a tendency to cause all your brains to leak out your ears. This is the only reason I can think of for all the incredibly asinine stuff that is coming out of D.C. of late.
Some of you may remember this
Researchers think the mysterious radio signal that might have been a sign of ALIENS and believed to come from Proxima Centauri star is likely generated by human technologies.
Human technology on a Proxima Centauri planet is indeed very risky disclosure.
Everywhere I turn, I see the Biden administration grossly overplaying its hand. Here the SEC in climate risk disclosure. Won’t end well for the Dems and Biden. But Jimmy Carter is smiling since he is no longer the worst president; even the Millard Fillmore Society is smiling.
Rud, you are describing the ongoing comedy show “Weekend At Brandon’s.” You can expect more since the MSM gave Xiden a pass on “$3.5 trillion will cost zero.” But, it is still a “its the economy, stupid” world.
The question is never about climate. The real question is to decrease general consumption of all producded goods.
Sociopolitical climate. Hopefully, it will change, soon.
The SEC is lying blatantly about “climate change risk”, as no such thing exists. There is a risk from idiotic energy policy, but that is completely different. Idiotic energy policy, not being based on reality can not continue indefinitely. Indeed, it contains the very seeds of its own destruction.
Yeah, what climate change risk? That’s what I would put down on my SEC form. Then it would be up to them to make a case that there is a risk.
To paraphrase William F. Buckley, I would rather be governed by the first 2,000 people in the telephone directory than by the “smart people”.
Can’t you now “disclose” that the overriding risk to the company is government interference in
normal operation of the market, bad press, anti-industry regs, and anti-industry investment.
“Climate risk” is imaginary.
Climate change fraud risk, however…
Simon says look stupid in all your corporate communications. It’s the regulation!
The institutions established to protect the operations of our free market economy are now nothing more than political shills for the ideologues in government. This will not end well.
obviously they dont put themselves in the Carbon Reporting otherwise they would not have included so much CO2 generation form illiterate out of touch humans who produce more red tape and paper
Biden’s administration often says they will take a “whole of government” approach toward their goals, and to get around congress. This is just one small part of that effort as the entire government is weaponized against the people.
I am happy to say I ignored the warnings and have done well on an S&P fund this past year. Just looking at some fossil fuel focused traded funds to up the ante. I will believe in the climate change Armageddon when Joe Biden joins Mensa.