The Securities and Exchange Commission made a ruling yesterday that requires all public companies to warn investors of any serious risks that they face due to global warming. The agency in the past has required disclosure of financial and legal requirements of other environmental challenges, but this is a sweeping ruling that ushers in a whole new era of global awareness as related to the interface between the economy and the environment.
“The S.E.C., on a party-line 3-2 vote, issued “interpretive guidance” to help companies decide when and whether to disclose matters related to climate change. The commission said that companies could be helped or hurt by climate-related lawsuits, business opportunities or legislation and should promptly disclose such potential impacts. Banks or insurance companies that invest in coastal property that could be affected by storms or rising seas, for example, should disclose such risks.”
Read more about this ruling in this story in the New York Times.
With this step of protecting investors against this risk come increased needs to assess and monitor global-scale changes as well as the changes within the holding of individual companies spread across broad geographies. This ruling sets in motion an entirely new level of utility for geographic information system investment within large organizations, where they’ll need to inventory assets and plug into global change models to understand the impacts on those assets.
