Jun. 16, 2022
June 16, 2022 The Commission should withdraw the proposed climate disclosure rule for the following reason: 1. The Commission is only authorized to require the disclosure of material information, defined as information important to reasonable investors in making investment decisions. 2. There is no issuer climate-related information that is material to any reasonable investor. 3. For example, the issuer with the greatest amount of greenhouse gas emissions is Vistra Energy, which emitted 106.51 million tons of CO2-equivalent in 2019. https://www.statista.com/statistics/260363/largest-corporate-air-polluters-in-the-united-states/ 4. In 2019, manmade global greenhouse gas emissions amounted to 59.1 billion tons. https://wedocs.unep.org/xmlui/bitstream/handle/20.500.11822/34461/EGR20KM.pdf?sequence=17 5. Therefore, Vistra Enegy's 2019 emissions amount to about 0.18% of global greenhouse gas emissions. 6. Vistra Energy could stop emitting now and forever and 99.82% and more of greenhouse gas emissions would still occur. 7. So regardless of how one views what passes nowadays as 'climate science,\" nothing Vistra Energy, the largest US emitter, emits or does can possibly affect climate and so cannot possibly be important to any reasonable investor. 8. It follows then that nothing any US issuer emits or does is meaningful in the context of global climate and so cannot possibly be important to any reasonable investor. 9. So issuer climate information cannot meet the materiality standard set by Congress. 10. Since issuer climate information is not material, the SEC has no statutory authority to require it. As such, the rule will not survive legal challenge.