By Patrick McHenry and Jay Clayton | March 20, 2022

 

The Securities and Exchange Commission will propose sweeping new rules this week requiring publicly traded, and perhaps even private, companies to disclose extensive climate-related data and additional “climate risks.”

 

Setting climate policy is the job of lawmakers, not the SEC, whose role is to facilitate the investment decision-making process. Companies choose how best to comply and thrive under those polices, and investors decide which business strategies to back. That approach addresses many societal issues—think vaccines—and enhances global welfare. Taking a new, activist approach to climate policy—an area far outside the SEC’s authority, jurisdiction and expertise—will deservedly draw legal challenges. What’s worse, it puts our time-tested approach to capital allocation, as well as the agency’s independence and credibility, at risk.

 

Understanding and addressing global climate change is one of the most complex and significant issues of our time. Some predict we face inevitable catastrophe, while others say the costs of the transition to a “net-zero world” outweigh the benefits.

 

We know four things for sure. First, implementing an economy-wide emissions-reduction policy will have a profound impact on the domestic energy, labor, transportation and housing markets, among others. Many jobs will be destroyed while others are created. Some businesses will close while others will flourish. Even if the long-term benefits outweigh the costs, near-term stresses on working Americans are inevitable and will be distributed unequally.

 

Second, leaving policy decisions this significant to a single regulator—or even a patchwork of regulators—has failed time and again. Tellingly, there is no indication that the SEC has meaningfully coordinated with any of the other relevant federal agencies and departments on the policy choices embedded in its proposed rules.

 

Third, Russia’s war against Ukraine demonstrates again the clear and longstanding links between energy policy, global stability and competing national interests. America’s ability to lead on the global stage depends on our economic and military strength, and energy policy is a key to both. These issues are far outside a financial regulator’s depth and mandate.

 

Fourth, the body that the Constitution prescribes for weighing the relevant trade-offs in this area is Congress. Congress, duly elected by and responsible to the people, is precisely where climate policy, in all its complexities and consequences, should be resolved. Yet over decades, elected leaders have pushed hard policy questions to federal agencies staffed by unelected bureaucrats, whose decisions are reviewed only by unelected judges. This is at best bad for democracy and at worst unconstitutional.

 

Demanding that the SEC “act on climate change” allows politicians to say that they are working on their constituents’ behalf without accepting responsibility for the hard choices involved in crafting policy.

 

Executive branch and independent agencies, including the Environmental Protection Agency; the Transportation, Labor, State and Treasury departments; and other financial regulators, have a role to play. They should work to inform Congress during the policy-making process and then implement legislative mandates in their respective areas of expertise.

Unfortunately, because the SEC has decided to move forward unilaterally, the debate will shift not to Congress, where it belongs, but to the courts. The commission’s chosen path will allow the political buck-passing to continue and delay thoughtful, appropriate and democratically accountable policy.

 

If and until Congress acts on climate policy, the message to regulators must be clear: Stay in your lane.

 

Mr. Clayton served as SEC chairman, 2017-20. Mr. McHenry, a North Carolina Republican, is ranking member of the House Financial Services Committee.

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