Trump SEC Moves To Free Public Companies From Telling Investors How Climate Change Might Cost Them Money, Resolving Long-Standing Concern That Shareholders Knew Too Much

WASHINGTON. The Securities and Exchange Commission announced Friday that it has proposed rescinding the rule requiring large public companies to tell their investors how climate change might affect the value of their investments, resolving a long-standing concern that American shareholders were being handed information they had not requested.

The rule, adopted in 2024 under the previous administration, had obligated big corporations to disclose climate-related financial risks along with their Scope 1 and Scope 2 greenhouse gas emissions, meaning the pollution a company produces directly and the pollution produced to generate the electricity it buys. Under the proposal, those companies will once again be free to keep such figures to themselves, sparing investors the burden of factoring a warming planet into decisions about where to place their retirement savings.

"Investors were getting confused by all the extra facts," said a source within the administration, describing the disclosures as an unnecessary intrusion into the relationship between a corporation and the risks it would prefer not to mention. "Now they can go back to learning about a flooded refinery or a stranded asset the traditional way, which is afterward."

The commission framed the rescission as a reduction of regulatory burden, noting that companies wishing to disclose their emissions and climate exposure remained free to do so voluntarily, an option the largest emitters have historically exercised by declining. Industry groups that had challenged the original rule in court welcomed the move, expressing relief that the federal government would no longer require them to quantify a problem they have spent years describing as exaggerated.

Climate analysts noted that the physical risks the rule was meant to disclose, including the wildfires, floods, and heat that periodically render corporate facilities inoperable, would continue to occur on schedule whether disclosed or not, and would simply arrive without advance notice.

At press time, the SEC had clarified that the rule change would in no way prevent investors from learning about a company's climate risk, provided they were willing to wait for it to materialize.