Companies need to calculate their risks as the climate changes.

I'm David Brancaccio in New York.

The Securities and Exchange Commission has voted 3 to 2 for new rules forcing public companies to disclose

climate-related risks to investors. These rules are meant to standardize

reporting on emissions, exposure to climate change-related disasters, and more.

Here's Marketplace's Elizabeth Troval.

In the meeting before the vote, SEC Commissioner Caroline Crenshaw got Shakespearean.

A risk by any other name of such import to public company investors

would be worthy of commission rulemaking.

Her point, despite the pushback, this is about investor risk, not a climate change debate.

Cornell's John Tobin agrees.

Many companies have interpreted already

the recommendations of the SEC to at least hint at the need for some climate disclosure

because yeah it's a material risk.

The new rules are softer than the ones first proposed.

Companies won't have to disclose emissions related to their supply chains or what

happens once their products are sold to a consumer. Consider the steel in cars. There have been massive amounts

of emissions in the process of going from iron ore in the ground to sheets of steel.

So big car companies who buy that steel

won't have to disclose emissions from the iron extraction.

I'm Elizabeth Trorovol for Marketplace.

The Interest Rate Center in Chief, the Federal Reserve Jerome Powell be on the hot seat

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