remember, tuesday is soylent green day
I demand that the SEC force publicly traded companies to reveal their involvement with Soylent Green! Because it's made of people!
ENN, via Reuters:
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A group of institutional investors, state officials and environmental groups called on the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission on Tuesday to force publicly-traded companies to disclose climate-related risks along with other factors that affect their business.
The group, which includes America's largest pension fund Calpers, Environmental Defense and New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo, wants the SEC to issue an "interpretive" release clarifying that material climate-related information must be included in corporate disclosures under existing law.
"Companies' financial condition increasingly depends upon their ability to avoid climate risk," said the petition signed by 22 officials and groups. The coalition said it has the support of funds and investors representing $1.5 trillion in assets.
Climate change risk can include effects on a company's performance and operations ranging from physical damage to new facilities and additional regulatory costs, the coalition said.
Under SEC regulations, companies are required to disclose material information -- information that an investor should possess to decide whether to buy or sell a stock -- in their quarterly and annual filings with the agency.
The coalition said Exxon Mobil, the largest oil company in the world, made just one reference to climate change in its 2006 annual report. Insurer Allstate Corp did not reference climate change in its 2006 annual report, the group said.
I'm hip deep in readings on the ELF, the ALF, and EF! for a case-study on the Earth Liberation Front's system of morals, metaphor, and why frames related to radical enviros don't mesh with the facts they're attempting to act in support of - it seems like there's a great deal of sense to what they're doing ("common sense" be another word for "values"), but a paucity of logic...anywho, it's helped me reflect on what's an outcome of a movement, what that movement is moving to do, and then what's product of an ideology.
A lot of what's getting press about global warming is coming from the top, which, as I've blogged on before, is what a lot of radical skepticism around it is in reaction to, a mighty fair point as fair points go. Indeed, much of the global warming work being done kinda reminds me of the New Deal - which, as guys like Howard Zinn have said, was mostly about saving capitalism from itself. That movement from the top is no doubt a recognition that a post-warmed planet will be a drastically different place in terms of market, investment, and especially, how much money they can make.
Just the same, Al Gore and James Hansen have wondered aloud recently about where the young radicals are on global warming. Al Gore basically had to drop out of politics to become get reborn. With a little "do as I say, not as I do" hovering around their statements, do they have any business in asking?
Pray tell. But what the ELF-ALF stuff has made abundantly clear to me is that saving Gotham City is more than about punching the Joker in the face, as good as that may feel.
<< Home