Senate Battle Lines Drawn on Climate-Risk Financial Agenda
Today’s Senate Banking Committee hearing on climate risk made it clear that the partisan divide evident earlier this week on housing (see Client Report MORTGAGE119) and much else extends to what financial regulators should do about climate risk. The SEC’s new focus on investor disclosures (see FSM Report GREEN6) was perhaps the biggest target of Republicans strongly opposed to any mandatory climate-risk disclosures, stress testing, or similar interventions. Ranking Member Toomey (R-PA) led this charge, asserting that new standards are not only premature, but would also lead to credit allocation for political – not systemic-risk – reasons.
