Essay by Eric Worrall
Companies in Australia are being warned they shouldn’t play down climate risks. For once I agree with the green regulators.
Warning to Aussie firms on mandatory climate reporting
By Marion Rae
Updated July 26 2024 – 11:16AM, first published 11:12AMAlmost one in five of Australia’s top 200 companies are providing very little reporting on their climate risks ahead of the implementation of mandatory disclosure.
The Australian Council of Superannuation Investors report released on Friday found the majority of ASX200 members have net-zero commitments and most have also set interim targets, which helps investors to gauge the credibility of a company’s plans.
But gaps remain in the depth and scope of climate reporting, with some companies only partially reporting on their climate risks and 18 per cent doing almost nothing.
…
More than 6000 entities will be required to report under new climate-related disclosure requirements in the next few years, with critics concerned about the cost of more green tape for business.
…
Read more: https://www.canberratimes.com.au/story/8708681/warning-to-aussie-firms-on-mandatory-climate-reporting/
For now most companies appear to be trying to avoid putting bad news in their company reports, apparently glossing over the required climate reporting risks, using qualitative language instead of quantitatively applying the latest “science”.
But what would happen if companies did the opposite? Took the wildest, most extreme IPCC projections, and reported in their prospectus there was nothing they could do to prevent the irreversible destruction of their companies? What if they told investors should be aware in 10 years or (pick a number) the company will no longer exist due to the ravages of climate change? That they intend to take no action to avert this risk, because no meaningful action is possible, due to rising emissions in China, India and Africa?
This would put the spotlight on the scientists making those predictions, not the companies reporting imminent climate catastrophe.
Because none of those predictions are true. We’ve already experienced almost two centuries of global warming, and nothing bad has happened. Year after year we see climate doomsday predictions expire with none of the calamities they predicted coming to pass.
By taking all these wild predictions literally, and putting the scariest possible prognosis in company reports, companies will not only avoid prosecution for non-compliance with absurd climate reporting laws, they will expose the most ridiculously extreme climate predictions to more public scrutiny – and in doing so will do everyone, including themselves, a big service.
Update (EW): The Government got caught by their own climate disclosure push in 2023. Last year a law student won a court case forcing the government to admit in all future debt raising that the debt might not be repaid due to climate change (thanks John the Econ for prompting me to remember this). The government still has no problem raising debt.
The whole point is to argue shareholder value is maximised by taking no action. Investors will read the loopy warning and ignore it.
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Be careful what you wish for!
But what would happen if companies took the wildest, most extreme IPCC projections, and reported in their prospectus there was nothing they could do to prevent the irreversible destruction of their companies?
Um maybe the government would nationalize their business in the name of “We know what should be done.”
Tell investors that if they want to guarantee a return on their investments, they should put their monies into heavily polluting Chinese companies
Ones with slave labor.
If they pay a decent price for it, go for it! Quadruple the grove’s burden!
Time for preferred ambiguity
Predicted Climate losses estimated as between +$1B AUS and -$1B AUS
That would be appropriate. Playing back the worst hysterical doom porn to the Green Blob might remind everyone else that the proposed way of dealing with the imminent disaster is as useless as it is batsh!t crazy.
Nearly 20 years since the alarm was sounded and still no obvious changes.
No ‘hockey stick’ in sight.
Just a continuation of slow post Little Ice Age warming boosted by the urban heat island effect.
20 Years? Silent Spring, Acid Rain, Ozone Hole, Nuclear Winter, Global Warming, Climate Change, Climate Crisis, Climate Emergency, Cats and dogs living together! It’s a long list going back to the ’60s.
And all the while that natural warming has been warming the oceans (70+% of Earth’s surface), from which dissolved CO2 has been being released into the atmosphere naturally (since CO2 is less soluble in warm water than in cold). First, the warming, then the atmospheric CO2 concentration increases, not the other way around as Gore and the Warmistas would have the public believe.
“hockey’ or ‘hokey’?
Why don’t companies just issue a statement as follows –
“The peak authority on climate change – the IPCC – states that long-term prediction of future climate states is not possible, because the climate system is a coupled non-linear chaotic system”
https://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar3/wg1/
Accordingly, we as Directors assess that our fiduciary obligations to shareholders in this matter are best discharged by waiting until reliable, verifiable effects of climatic changes are published and enacted in corporate law”.
More muscle flexing by a useless government that can’t properly justify its declarations so the only thing left is for them to pummel citizens into submission. Out of control government is very very dangerous thing.
Or they could just tell the truth, something like:
It would take an office assistant just a few minutes to type, saving time and money. There’s an implied but firm “go stuff yourself” inherent in that statement, directed at the doomsaying government busybodies and their crazy dreams and schemes.
No, telling the truth gets them prosecuted for misleading investors. But using the dumbest IPCC projections as a reason not to take action, and telling investors the world will end next Tuesday, exposes the reporting requirement for the joke it is.
Prosecute them for what? This is simply a requirement to report their “climate risk” which is microscopically close to zero. They can be prosecuted for failing to file a report, but they can’t be prosecuted for reporting that their risk is nil.
If the overwhelming majority of companies report they have no risk, the government might get the message that climate policies are nowhere on their list of policy imperatives and are likely to kick like a mule if the government pursues them. Unfortunately leftists are maddeningly persistent in their wrongheadedness and public backlash may not deter them. But the truth is always the best policy.
No, the real requirement is for the companies to each become an arm of the government’s climate change propaganda bureau and effectively repeat its talking points.
Finally, an avenue to put the dark side into their own stewing juice. Be specific and name the calamities and then point out that if the climate doesn’t do them in, the gov’s solutions to it will finish them off. Rocketing energy prices, intermittency of power, gov energy demand ‘management’ will chase the last investors away from them. Then tell employees, investors to ask gov what they plan to do to alleviate this loss of jobs, loss of economic productivity, and the viability of the country. Any guts left out there? Has the gov any Albo romm to handle a problem that’s even bigger than 8.5 climate?
Government entities issuing long-term debt should certainly be required to do this. “Don’t have any expectation that we will be paying you back in 30 years, because the climate will have killed us all by then.”
That actually came up as an issue last year 🙂
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2023/08/31/did-a-climate-alarmist-law-student-just-kill-the-green-movement/
“We’ve already experienced almost two centuries of global warming, and nothing bad has happened.”
I agree! But then the warmunists would just respond by saying that ALL weather is bad now due to CC and just look around at all the destruction, fires, droughts, floods, as they see common events as evidence.
Hence my point – you can’t argue with absurd reporting requirements without getting prosecuted, but you can make them look like idiots and turn the entire process into a big joke.
Cellphone cameras everywhere and the Internet to spread the pictures around.
Except, perhaps, that unsubsidized energy prices per WH have risen due to policy changes intended to reduce carbon dioxide, nitrogen compound, and particulate emissions.
It is fine for economists like Bjorn Lomborg to say, in the macro sense, that policy will impoverish the population. Corporate entities should be able to show energy costs in detail, and project the future rise based on historic trends.
Perhaps companies should report that truth?
No, reporting the truth gets you into legal trouble.
If government regulations look likely to put you out of business you actually do run the business into the ground, squeeze as much value as possible with minimal maintenance budget.
When the government realises they are about to lose an essential service they panic and offer generous subsidies to keep going, which allows you to switch from trying to make a profit in an impossible market to subsidy mining.
That’s what the Aussie coal plants appear to be doing right now.
Hence the sandbagging going on in the EV business. Works for subdivisions, too.
Still, in just the way warmunists have pushed DEI through regulation manipulation, stockholders ought to be able to push on board members when costs reduce profits.
Eric, your suggestion is the perfect implementation of Scott Adams’ strategy against absurd rules – “embrace and amplify”. Good.
But wait, why stop at the most extreme of the actual IPCC report scenarios? Just say, “We have it on good authority from the U.N. that the oceans are already boiling, so we expect the market for our product to evaporate shortly no matter what we do at this point.”
That’s covered by “Even worse scenarios are possible” :-).
“The government still has no problem raising debt.” And as a result of that lawsuit, governments will see their interest rates rise. Lenders have no option but to consider those risks and ensure they are paid well enough to take the perceived additional risk.
Now governments face lawsuits if the prospectus for every new bond offering does not include a section on climate change risk. Besides higher interest rates, they now also pay someone to explain what that risk entails and the possible impact it may have on the repayment of the bond. They have just made borrowing money harder for themselves.
That was what I thought when I wrote the climate lawsuit article. But what actually happened is investors ignored the warning.
Companies should also make sure they state loud and clear the damage that the “Climate Agenda” will likely cause to their business.
There will be far more companies collapse because of idiotic Net-Zero and Anti-CO2 and other wacko leftist agendas than will ever be harmed by “climate change”.
A wealthy western democratic government is determined to force private industries to join their end-of-times pretend fantasy to the detriment of their competitiveness in the free market and their shareholder’s value. This is the opposite of what sane people believe the role of government should be. The people who want this should move to communist China or the pretend democracy of Russia where they can enjoy the fruits of this idiotic thinking.