https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/climate-risks-bill-could-spark-shift-to-truly-green-economy/

Large financial institutions and major business sectors have long ignored, underestimated or even hid some of the major risks they face from climate change. These actions can put investments and economic stability at risk. Misrepresentations or miscalculations of business practices’ environmental soundness, often called greenwashing, and fossil-fuel-industry subsidies are two examples of how climate costs can be obscured. But such techniques might soon face a reckoning, a revamping or even a coordinated dismantling in the U.S.

Democratic Representative Sean Casten of Illinois is a former biochemist who put climate change concerns at the center of his platform when he first ran for Congress in 2018. Casten is helping to develop legislation that, he says, is designed to clear a path to a more climate-conscious economy. Such a system should be more stable, prosperous and environmentally robust than the current one, Casten says. Examples of financial instability after events linked to climate change include electricity and natural gas price spikes and bankruptcies in the wake of Texas’s power grid failure in February. A climate-related financial risks bill that Casten and colleagues are set to introduce this week in Congress gets into the weeds of companies’ accountability to the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) when it comes to carbon emissions and exposure to climate risks. A lack of standards for climate-related risk reporting to the SEC makes it difficult for investors to compare and trust companies’ environmental claims and stated plans to transition away from fossil fuels, Casten says. The Climate Risk Disclosure Act would direct the SEC to close that gap and yield more reliable data on companies’ carbon-pollution claims and aims. Casten thinks the act would thus ultimately eliminate biases in our financial system that impede efforts to significantly address climate change. Scientific American spoke with Casten about the bill and why he thinks it should be of interest to science advocates and people concerned about our climate emergency.