SEC environmental-risk disclosure requirements remain largely unenforced and underutilized

Evidence

A potentially effective information disclosure requirement under already existing law that has been largely underutilized, however, is the federal Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) requirement that publicly traded firms disclose financially material information to current and potential investors in the firm’s securities. Although the SEC long ago ruled that such disclosure requirements extended to a firm’s environmental risks, such as the release of contaminants or noncompliance with applicable environmental requirements, there has apparently been neither much actual disclosure nor significant SEC enforcement. More widespread compliance would both allow investors to make better informed decisions about the actual liabilities and assets of particular firms and, not coincidentally, provide those same firms with a major incentive to minimize environmental risks. — Richard J. Lazarus, The Making of Environmental Law, 822

Categorization

• QUESTION: Worth chasing: has SEC enforcement of environmental financial disclosure expanded since this book was written, e.g., under recent climate-risk rules?
• SEED: Potential essay angle: the underused SEC lever as a disclosure-based environmental regime for a Legal Systems readership.
• XREF: connects to: Federally required self-monitoring reports became the linchpin of citizen-suit enforcement — Richard J. Lazarus, The Making of Environmental Law, 399