This is the Libertarian Podcast.

This is the Libertarian Podcast from the Hoover Institution.

I'm your host Tom Church and the Libertarian is

Professor Richard Epstein. Richard's the Peter and Kirsten Bedford senior fellow

here at the Hoover Institution. He's the Lawrence A Tish Professor of Law at NYU and is a senior lecturer at the University of Chicago.

Richard, when it comes to climate change, I'll admit that financial regulation isn't the first thing that I think of.

And yet your column this week is on some newly proposed disclosure requirements on climate change

from the SEC, the Securities Exchange Commission.

I think that the justification for these rules is that they will make

comparability of anti-global warming efforts or anti-climate change efforts of different companies

a lot easier. Can you tell us a bit more about the proposed requirements and give us a clue as to their efficacy?

Well, it turns out the function of the SEC is actually somewhat in the doubt now and in debate.

The original conception was pretty clear

is that what you were supposed to do

is to require disclosures by companies

of all material information that would influence decision of whether or not to buy, hold, or sell a stock and in what quantities.

So it was designed for the public by way of investors.

In the more modern discussions including that which is done with

respect to the SEC report, they say this is also to inform the public. And they don't mean by

that the investing public, but they mean is the general public who may or may not have concern.

Now when the general public gets this information, it often translates into political action,

saying in effect if the threats of global warming are as large as the critics say,

...