U.S. corporations don't have to reveal CO2 emissions if they don't want to

Climate news:

"In 2022, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) proposed a climate disclosure rule that would have forced public companies to report their greenhouse gas emissions—from their direct emissions (also known as Scope 1 emissions), to emissions from their energy use (Scope 2), to emissions from their supply chain (Scope 3). It also would have required that companies report how climate change is impacting their bottom line.

But that’s not what happened. Instead, on Wednesday [March 6, 2024], the five-person SEC voted to adopt a climate disclosure rule that was significantly watered down. It is no longer mandatory for companies to report their emissions; instead it says that companies should disclose their greenhouse gas emissions if they consider them “material”—in other words, of significant importance to their investors."

— "How corporate America won the fight to keep its pollution secret," Arielle Samuelson, HEATED, March 8, 2024

Samuelson explains that this happened because of

"the conservative Trump-appointed judges all over the country— many of whom are Trump-appointed—striking down federal climate regulations. According to Clara Vondrich, senior policy counselor at consumer advocacy nonprofit Public Citizen, the world’s most polluting industries and GOP lawmakers threatened to sue if the SEC required them to report all their emissions. Those were not empty threats—within hours of the final rule being adopted, 10 Republican-led states had sued the SEC for overreach."