Political Quotes

“Mr. President, today I am introducing legislation to require the Securities and Exchange Commission, SEC, to update its industry guides for oil, gas, and mining companies. In November 2015, Peabody Energy agreed to provide comprehensive SEC disclosures about climate change risks facing the company when it settled charges of misleading investors. The company executed this settlement with the New York Attorney General after an investigation discovered that Peabody Energy ``repeatedly denied in public financial filings to the SEC that it had the ability to predict the impact that potential regulation of climate change pollution would have on its business, even though Peabody and its consultants actually made projections that such regulation would have severe impacts on the company.'' Unfortunately, it appears that the SEC had no role in this settlement, in which Peabody Energy agreed to amend its SEC disclosures, admitting that ``concerns about the environmental impacts of coal combustion . . . could significantly affect demand for our products or our securities.'' It is clear that the SEC needs to do more when it comes to critically reviewing the disclosures being filed by publicly traded companies, but it is also clear that the SEC's industry guides for oil, gas, and mining companies should be updated to reflect the growing risk of climate change to these companies.…”