As Copenhagen nears, the companies in the fossil energy industry that will be actually impacted by the climate bill are still not reporting their climate change risks, according to the Environmental Defense Fund and the Center for Energy and Environmental Security.
Climate-related disclosure “continues to be weak or altogether nonexistent in SEC filings of global companies with the most at stake in preparing for a low-carbon global economy.”
Instead, a continuation of the traditional fossil industry delay tactics: “sowing the seeds of doubt” about the science behind climate change continues right up to the deadline of the Copenhagen agreement.
The newest tactic is the email hacking and theft and publication of hundreds of thousands of emails going back decades at the Hadley Center in the UK, with the aim of creating the erroneous impression that climate change data has been somehow falsified. (The data on ongoing climate change is available).
The timing is politically motivated, and seems desperate. The biggest takeaway from the emails is the revelation of the decades of ongoing harassment of climate scientists by the likely hacker group.
Regardless of these tactics, the Securities and Exchange Commission ruled this year that investors can now demand this disclosure.
Image from The NZ Meteorological Society
Source: ClimateBiz
About Susan Kraemer
