Impromptu Questions on the SEC ’s Climate Risk Proposal, Part 4

C. Wallace DeWittToday, let ’s consider the views, or at least the real interests, of environmental activists in evaluating the Securities and Exchange Commission’s (SEC) recent climate riskrule proposal. In my view, the environmental movement stands to lose from symbolic “meme regulation”—to coin a term —like this rulemaking.Did anyone ask environmentalists?Well, plainly yes, in a sense. The SEC ’s comment letter file is already filling with submissions from NGOs and “stakeholders” who are relatively infrequent participants in, say, nuts‐​and‐​bolts discussions of securities market infrastructure. In another sense, however, plainlyno—the proposed rulemaking is motivated by a desire todo something, even if that something has little practical prospect of addressing underlying concerns.Let me be plain. The stated rationale for the proposed rule is entirely pretextual. There is a vanishingly small likelihood that the SEC leadership earnestly believes that —but for the present rulemaking —a securities fraud of staggering historical magnitude would be perpetrated against the investing public. “Enhancement” of the existing disclosure regime seems difficult to sustain on grounds that there is material informationabout the impending inundation of planet earththat is, at this late date, unbeknownst to investors. As a junior associate with a U.S. law firm in Tokyo a decade ago, I regularly was tasked with draft...

Source: Cato-at-liberty - April 28, 2022 Category: American Health Authors: C. Wallace DeWitt Source Type: blogs