Jul. 28, 2026
Dear Secretary Vanessa Countryman, I am extremely concerned about the US Securities and Exchange Commission’s proposed rollback of disclosure requirements under Regulation S-K. Removing standardized climate-related disclosure requirements for public companies means investors, regulators, and the public are less able informed decisions. Climate change is not a matter of profits and losses, it’s a matter of life and death (witness the wildfires in France and Spain); and the transition to clean energy is urgent. The SEC has statutory authority to require companies to disclose information that is material to investors. Courts have affirmed that investors, not companies, determine what information is useful. Investors overwhelmingly support collection and disclosure of information on climate-related financial risk. The SEC’s argument that compliance would be excessively costly is absurd, considering these companies are already required to disclose this information in dozens of jurisdictions around the world. And who should bear the financial burden anyway? The companies who are making a profit, or the people who increasingly suffer the effects of climate change? Left unchecked, climate change is likely to cause trillions of dollars of economic damages in the United States and globally. Financial disclosures provide data used in research that informs investors, policymakers, and financial institutions. Depriving investors of important climate-related information will only serve to undermine efforts to assess and mitigate climate risk, at the expense of economic stability. I urge you to keep in place robust climate disclosure requirements and withdraw the proposed rule to roll back disclosure requirements. Sincerely, Stephanie Crowley