Apple and Amazon are among the nearly 75 percent of US publicly traded companies ignoring a Securities and Exchange Commission rule that they inform investors of climate-related risks, Inside Climate News reports.
The news agency says Lawrence Taylor, a 72-year-old retired database developer and entrepreneur, culled data from annual reports of 3,895 US public companies listed on major stock exchanges and found that only 27 percent mentioned “climate change” or “global warming” in their most recent filing.
Apple and Amazon are also among the companies that did not respond to CDP’s request for emissions, according to the CDP Global 500 Climate Change Report 2013, released earlier this month.
The SEC rule, approved in January 2010, mandates that publicly traded companies must warn investors about any serious risks from climate change to their operations.
Taylor tells Inside Climate News that he’s working to make the searchable database of climate risk disclosure more user-friendly and plans to publish it on his website, DecisionFacts.org, in the coming months.
Ceres also plans to release a database later this year comparing how thousands of companies disclose climate risk in financial documents, the news agency says.
The Ceres-led Investor Network on Climate Risk earlier this year proposed that companies listed on US and global stock exchanges be required to include a series of environmental, social and governance sustainability disclosures in their annual financial filings.
The group of investors, which includes BlackRock, British Columbia Investment Management Corporation and the AFL-CIO Office of Investment, drafted a proposal that calls for companies to disclose an ESG materiality assessment process, a sustainability table of disclosures that would map the locations of ESG content in public documents, and ESG reporting on eight key issues.
A majority of investors view climate change as a material risk and as a consequence have retained — and in many cases advanced — their commitment to addressing climate change in their investment activities, according to research published last month by consultant Mercer.
