[✔️] March 7, 2024 Global Warming News | S.E.C. falls back, Election and heat and sea level rise, 5 crucial elections global impact, 2013 Insurance blunders

Thu Mar 7 13:37:45 EST 2024

/*March*//*7, 2024*/

/[ An economic force meets a moral compulsion ]/
*S.E.C. to Approve New Climate Rules Far Weaker Than Originally Proposed*
The rules, designed to inform investors of business risks from climate 
change, were rolled back amid opposition from the G.O.P., fossil fuel 
producers, farmers and others.
By Hiroko Tabuchi, Ephrat Livni and David Gelles
March 6, 2024
The Securities and Exchange Commission is expected on Wednesday to 
approve new rules detailing if and how public companies should disclose 
climate risks and how much greenhouse gas emissions they produce, but 
there are fewer demands on businesses than the original proposal made 
about two years ago.

The rules represent a step toward requiring corporations to inform 
investors of both their climate emissions, as well as the business risks 
that they face from floods, rising temperatures and weather disasters. 
An earlier and more all-encompassing proposal faced outspoken Republican 
backlash and opposition from a range of companies and industries, 
including fossil fuel producers.

The main difference: Under the original proposal, large companies would 
have been required to disclose not just planet-warming emissions from 
their own operations, but also emissions produced along what’s known as 
a company’s “value chain” — a term that encompasses everything from the 
parts or services bought from other suppliers, to the way that people 
who use the products ultimately dispose of them. Pollution created all 
along this value chain could add up.

Now, that requirement is gone.

In addition, the biggest companies will have to report the emissions 
they directly produce, but only if the companies themselves consider the 
emissions “material,” or of significant importance to their bottom 
lines, a qualification that leaves corporations leeway. Thousands of 
smaller businesses are exempt, another big change from the original 
proposal, which would have required all publicly traded corporations to 
disclose their direct emissions.
Also gone from the final rules is a requirement that companies state the 
climate expertise of members on their board of directors.

But the directive for companies to disclose significant risks related to 
climate change — for example, risks to waterfront properties owned by a 
hotel chain from rising sea levels and storm surges — survived.
Supporters of stronger disclosure requirements said the omissions could 
undermine the rule altogether. “Thanks to corporate lobbying, disclosure 
of the very real financial risks from climate change has fallen victim 
to the culture wars,” said Allison Herren Lee, former acting chair and 
commissioner at the S.E.C., who had championed more climate-related 
disclosures.

Climate disasters, including extreme weather like hurricanes, floods and 
drought, are taking a rising toll on people and businesses around the 
world, disrupting supply chains and damaging crops. In 2023, the United 
States experienced a record 28 weather and climate disasters that cost 
at least $1 billion each, according to the National Oceanic and 
Atmospheric Administration. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said last 
year that losses tied to climate change could “cascade through the 
financial system.”

But Jay Clayton, who served as S.E.C. chair under Donald J. Trump, said 
the commission had been “arrogant” in proposing the stronger 
requirements, saying it hadn’t shown that the data was relevant to 
financial returns for investors. Instead, he said, many investors seemed 
to want those requirements “for political, social and other reasons.”
Some Democratic lawmakers also opposed the S.E.C.’s initial proposal, 
believing they would be burdensome to small farmers.

The S.E.C. first proposed the climate rules almost two years ago. Since 
then, it has considered more than 16,000 comments from companies, 
business groups and others weighing in on the potential regulation.
Many corporations argued that the regulations would be onerous and 
expensive, and fail to offer investors much useful information. 
Republican lawmakers have also been pushing back on the business world’s 
embrace of environmental, social and governance principles, known as E.S.G.

In recent weeks, more financial firms have walked back their own climate 
commitments, suggesting that the political pressure was having an effect.

Also weighing on the S.E.C. as it mulled the final rules is a Supreme 
Court that has shown a willingness to entertain conservative challenges 
to regulation and to limit agencies’ power, including authority to 
regulate greenhouse gas emissions...
- -
At the same time, environmental organizations are gearing up to sue, 
saying the final rules fall short. The Sierra Club said it was 
“considering challenging the S.E.C.’s arbitrary removal of key 
provisions from the final rule.” And it would also defend the 
commissions’s authority to implement such a rule in the first place, the 
Sierra Club said, something industry lobby groups and conservative 
politicians were expected to challenge.

There is some evidence that climate-disclosure rules could have an 
effect on human emissions of greenhouse gases, the most significant 
driver of climate change, said Asaf Bernstein, a professor of finance at 
the University of Colorado Boulder who focuses on climate issues. “In 
other countries, when they’ve put in disclosure requirements, there have 
been what appears to be emissions reductions in response to those 
disclosures,” he said.

Even if the S.E.C. rules face challenges, some companies have begun 
voluntarily reporting more information about their emissions and the 
risks posed by climate change, said Amelia Miazad, who runs the Business 
in Society Institute at the U.C. Berkeley law school.

“There’s clear investor demand for the information, and so the business 
community will have to respond to that demand,” she said.
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/03/06/climate/sec-climate-disclosure-regulations.html?unlocked_article_code=1.ak0.9qic.h-1nr-4R4vpH&smid=url-share

/[ The election and sea level rise   ]/
*Record Heat, Rising Sea Levels:
The Stakes for the Climate Couldn’t Be Higher in 2024 Elections
*From Biden vs. Trump to an oil well referendum in California, climate 
change debate is all over the ballot in federal, state and local contests.
By Marcus Baram
03-01-24
- -
We cannot predict the outcome of the fall elections, but there is no 
doubt among scientists that immediate and transformative action is our 
only hope against a future of cataclysmic weather, mass migration, and 
wars caused by our destabilized environment. As time runs out, it is 
candidates and voters who will determine if we step up to the challenge.
https://www.fastcompany.com/91042364/in-the-2024-election-climate-is-on-the-ballot-and-not-just-when-it-comes-to-biden-vs-trump

/[  politics will engage with the physical world ]/
*How five crucial elections in 2024 could shape climate action for decades*
Some of the world’s biggest carbon emitters are going to the polls this 
year — the results could determine whether humanity can correct its 
trajectory of dangerous global warming.
By Smriti Mallapaty, Jeff Tollefson, Carissa Wong, Sarah Wild & Nisha Gaind
This year, voters in five of the world’s biggest carbon-emitting 
territories go to the polls. These regions — the United States, India, 
Indonesia, Russia and the European Union — represent one-third of the 
world’s population and about the same proportion of human-made carbon 
emissions.

How the political wind blows from these elections will be crucial in 
determining whether humanity can correct its current trajectory of 
dangerous climate warming (see ‘Monstrous emissions’). Current climate 
policies are likely to result in warming of about 2.7 °C by 2100, 
according to the group Climate Action Tracker, which monitors global 
climate commitments — well above the 1.5 °C goal laid out in the 2015 
Paris climate accord. Long-term climate commitments could prevent 
another 0.6 °C of warming, but those depend on further action by 
governments, including many whose leaders are up for election in 2024. 
It could be a pivotal year.

https://media.nature.com/lw767/magazine-assets/d41586-024-00642-3/d41586-024-00642-3_26807010.jpg?as=webp

*United States: Biden versus Trump*
In August 2022, US President Joe Biden surprised the world with a 
legislative victory on climate spending that, by some recent estimates, 
is likely to lock in nearly US$1 trillion in investment until 2032. This 
includes direct spending as well as tax credits for everything from wind 
and solar power to electric transport, carbon sequestration and 
reskilling programmes for people who currently work in the fossil-fuel 
sector. One of the Biden administration’s main jobs now is to ensure 
that the money is invested wisely and keeps flowing if Biden is 
re-elected on 5 November.

Researchers have estimated that Biden’s flagship achievement, the 2022 
Inflation Reduction Act, could double the pace of US climate progress by 
itself and reduce the country’s carbon emissions by 43–48% by 2035, 
relative to 2005 levels. That is short of the US commitment to cut 
emissions by 50% by 2030, also compared with 2005, but the 
administration is pushing forwards on other fronts, including issuing 
regulations to reduce emissions from vehicles and power plants. Overall, 
climate specialists say it’s a historic effort that could help the 
world’s second-largest greenhouse-gas emitter (behind China) to lead a 
clean-energy revolution.

“We’ve never seen a decarbonization effort like this,” says Noah 
Kaufman, an economist at Columbia University’s Center on Global Energy 
Policy in Washington DC. The Biden administration’s climate agenda has 
significant momentum, Kaufman says, and another four years would help 
the administration to lock in progress. “The question is, what happens 
if we lose this momentum?”
Biden’s likely main opponent in the November election, former president 
Donald Trump, remains hostile to government action on climate, and there 
is little doubt that he will do everything he can to promote fossil 
fuels if he wins. He is widely expected to pull the United States out of 
the 2015 Paris climate agreement — for a second time. The first 
withdrawal, which came into effect on 4 November 2020, a day after Trump 
lost his re-election bid, was quickly reversed by the incoming Biden 
administration. Trump has also said he would use his executive authority 
to weaken climate regulations and expand federal oil and gas programmes.

But it would be difficult for Trump to override the clean-energy 
investments in the Inflation Reduction Act. Because those investments 
were laid out in a law, Congress would need to enact a new one to roll 
them back, says Samantha Gross, who heads the Energy Security and 
Climate Initiative at the Brookings Institution, a think tank based in 
Washington DC.

To have any chance of doing that, Republicans would need to retain 
control of the House of Representatives and win enough seats to take 
control of the Senate in the November elections. Even then, Gross says, 
it wouldn’t be easy. The law is already incentivizing businesses to 
invest and create jobs in communities across the country, and many are 
in Republican districts. “Once the economic benefits start flowing, the 
political calculus changes,” she says.
- -
*India: Modi’s climate balancing act*
Climate change isn’t high on the agenda in India’s upcoming general 
elections. But it is crucial to Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s global 
ambitions, say researchers.

Voting across the vast country will probably take place in April and 
May. If Modi and his Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) win a third five-year 
term, he will be preoccupied with his legacy as a climate leader, says 
Aseem Prakash, a political scientist at the University of Washington in 
Seattle.

India is the world’s third-biggest emitter of greenhouse gases. But the 
country is also home to 1.4 billion people, which is more than one-sixth 
of the world’s population. Its per-capita emissions are less than 
one-seventh those of the United States and one-quarter those of China...
--
In the unlikely event that Modi loses, Selvaraju says he doesn’t expect 
a shift away from India’s dual push for renewables and coal, “simply 
because it’s not really in the hands of the politicians”. Unlike in the 
United States, India’s climate policies don’t flip-flop according to who 
is in power, says Dhruba Purkayastha, director for India at the 
non-profit research group Climate Policy Initiative, based in New Delhi.

But climate change should be on the agenda, says Das. From flooding to 
drought and heat stress, “India is a highly climate-vulnerable country.”

*Indonesia: powered by nickel and coal*
Indonesians went to the polls on 14 February to elect a new president 
and legislature. Votes are still being counted, but the majority of the 
almost 130 million Indonesians who voted look to have chosen a leader 
who promised continuity with the policies of Joko Widodo, the outgoing 
president. Prabowo Subianto, a former army general and minister of 
defence under Widodo, ran with Widodo’s eldest son, Gibran Rakabuming 
Raka, as his vice-presidential candidate.

“From the perspective of climate change, not much will change,” says 
Daniel Murdiyarso, a climate scientist and president of the Indonesian 
Academy of Sciences, who is based in Bogor, south of the capital Jakarta.
Researchers say that in the short term, that means more coal consumption 
and exports, slow progress on reducing deforestation and cheap but dirty 
nickel extraction. The country is the world’s leading producer of raw 
nickel, needed to fuel the growing global appetite for electric 
vehicles, batteries and stainless steel. “Business is probably going to 
trump any other concerns,” says political scientist Jemma Purdey at the 
Australia–Indonesia Centre at Monash University in Melbourne...- -

Indonesia is also home to some of the world’s largest tropical 
rainforests, peatlands and mangroves. Under Subianto, researchers expect 
Indonesia to adhere to its international commitments to reducing 
deforestation — the rate of forest loss there has declined over the past 
five years — while also strengthening the palm-oil industry, which adds 
to pressure on rainforests and carbon-storing peatlands.

*Russia: the smog of war*
In March, Russian leader Vladimir Putin will begin a fifth term as 
president following an election, the result of which is not in doubt. 
Climate change will not feature in a campaign that Putin will use to 
claim endorsement of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and rally anti-Western 
sentiment.

The ongoing war and economic sanctions — imposed by the European Union 
and countries including the United States and United Kingdom — are 
likely to hinder future climate action in the world’s fourth-largest 
greenhouse-gas emitter, says Marianna Poberezhskaya, who studies Russian 
climate politics at Nottingham Trent University, UK.
“Major shocks like economic crises, and obviously the war, the worst of 
them all, makes the already quite weak climate position and policy in 
Russia even weaker,” says Poberezhskaya. This is despite the nation 
already experiencing severe wildfires and flooding owing to climate 
change in recent years...
As the war continues, climate change and its impact on human rights will 
continue to take a back seat, says Matthew Druckenmiller, vice-president 
of the International Arctic Science Committee. “This is sad to see; the 
majority of Indigenous peoples in the Arctic are in Russia, and now they 
are removed from the equation.”

*EU: A challenging shift to the right*
The European Union likes to see itself as a world leader on climate 
action. In 2021, the bloc’s members agreed and passed laws to reduce net 
greenhouse-gas emissions by at least 55% from 1990 levels by 2030, and 
to achieve climate neutrality by 2050. A proposal unveiled last month 
targets an even more ambitious 90% reduction by 2040. So far, Europe has 
reduced its emissions by 32.5% from 1990 levels.

Over 4 days from 6 to 9 June, European citizens from 27 countries will 
elect 720 politicians to the European Parliament for 5 years. Polling 
indicates a sharp move towards parties on the right that are less 
focused on climate action, a trend that could stymie Europe’s climate 
leadership and delay urgent measures, say experts...
“The EU has successfully tackled the low-hanging fruit, like renewable 
energy and energy efficiency,” she says. “Can it actually go the next 
step in tackling the harder parts of the transition to carbon neutrality?”
Nature 627, 22-25 (2024)
doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-024-00642-3
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-024-00642-3

/[ The news archive - from the great Kate Sheppard  ]/
/*March 7, 2013 */
March 7, 2013: Kate Sheppard of Mother Jones reports:

    "Despite record heat and extreme weather disasters in recent years,
    insurers aren't adequately planning for climate change, according to
    a report issued Thursday. Only 13 percent of insurance companies
    have a 'specific, comprehensive strategy' to deal with global warming."

http://www.motherjones.com/blue-marble/2013/03/report-insurers-still-ignoring-climate-change 

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