By Ann W. Parks

From Left: Julie Gorte, Pax World Management Corporation; Donald Langevoort, Georgetown Law; Roel Campos, Cooley Godward Kronish LLP.

The problem of climate change is not going away — but whether the Securities and Exchange Commission will soon provide guidelines on climate change disclosure requirements is a more difficult question to answer.

On November 30, a panel of experts gathered at the Law Center to address that question and others relating to global warming, including the risks (and indeed, opportunities) faced by businesses as they attempt to deal with the issue. The event was sponsored by the Georgetown Environmental Law & Policy Institute and the Georgetown Environmental Law Society; Professor John D. Echeverria moderated the panel.

The discussion focused on the September filing of a petition urging the commission to provide guidance to public companies as they disclose financial risks relating to climate change. The petitioners included Environmental Defense, the New York attorney general’s office, various state treasurers, and Ceres, a national network of investors, environmental organizations and public interest groups working with companies and investors to address climate change issues.

“It’s basically to send a message and to provide help to the community of registrants who have to file with the SEC about their financial conditions,” lead counsel Sean Donahue, a partner at Donahue & Goldberg, said of the coalition’s petition. “The disclosures that we see suggest that a lot of companies aren’t giving this the attention it deserves.”

Roel C. Campos, a partner at Cooley Godward Kronish and a former commissioner at the SEC, praised the petition as a “terrific piece of work.” While he did not believe that the matter would be a top priority for the commission — with only a year left in the current presidential administration — he was optimistic about the future.“You are building a base for potentially the next commission,” he said.

Georgetown Law Professor Donald Langevoort, who teaches securities law, agreed that the petition probably would not make it on next year’s SEC agenda , but that it could still pay off in the long run. And while he found the petition extraordinarily well-crafted, Langevoort did question a phrase that would require registrants to disclose “any and all material information related to climate change” — a standard that is commonly an aspiration, not a reality, in securities law. “I suspect that sentence will cause most securities lawyers go through the roof,” he said.

Mitigate

Kevin A. Ewing of Bracewell & Giuliani noted some of the public policy questions raised by the petition, including whether the SEC should declare that climate change is a “material issue” within the framework of existing laws. Richard Rosenzweig of Natsource discussed how companies assess economic risks owing to climate change.

Julie Gorte of petitioner Pax World Management Corp. noted that as little as two years ago investors viewed climate change as a “bunny-hugger issue.” Now, she says, climate change is regarded as something with serious financial implications.

Gorte shared some weather statistics of recent years that have been linked to climate change, including an increase in droughts, hurricanes and ocean temperatures.

“The last time the climate changed as fast as it is changing now and projected to change in the next century, everything on earth that weighed 77 pounds or more died,” she said. “It’s time to lose weight—or else, time to mitigate.”

A Webcast is available at http://www.law.georgetown.edu/webcast/eventDetail.cfm?eventID=457.

 

 

 

December 3, 2007 (AWP)